This edition, consisting of 

4 copies on Vellum, 

5 copies on Van Gclder paper, 
50 copies on Japan paper, 

425 copies on Dickinson paper, 

was printed from type in the month of October, 1890. 




. (£j($&Zkt*+>ub &rfg><\ 






This copy is No. 



iW 



HORACE WALPOLE 



HORACE WALPOLE 



A MEMOIR 



WITH AN APPENDIX OF BOOKS PRINTED AT THE 
STRAWBERRY HILL PRESS 



BY 

AUSTIN DOBSON 

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY 

PERCY AND LEON MORAN 



3 



% 



J -■ 




NEW-YORK 
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY 
1890 



/ 



Copyright, 1890, 
By Dodd, Mead & Company. 



; !THE LIBRARY] 

- ss' f 



IS 



(a 



THE DE VINNE PRESS. 



<J>IA0BIBA0I2 *IA0BIBA02 



TO THE MEMBERS OF THE 

GROLIER CLUB 

THIS MEMOIR OF A BYGONE 

BOOK-LOVER, PRINTER, AND MAN-OF-LETTERS 

IS CORDIALLY INSCRIBED 



CHAPTER I. 

The Walpoles of Houghton ; Horace Walpole born, 24 September, 
1717 ; Lady Louisa Stuart's story j scattered facts of his boy- 
hood ; minor anecdotes, — "la belle Jennings," the bugles ; 
interview with George L before his death j portrait at this 
titne ; goes to Eton, 26 April, 1727 ; his studies and school- 
fellows ; the "triumvirate," the "quadruple alliance"; 
entered at Lincoln's Inn, 27 May, 1731 ; leaves Eton, Sep- 
tember, 1734 ; goes to King's College, Cambridge, 11 March, 
1735 j his university studies; letters from Cambridge; 
verses in the gratulatio ; verses in memory of Henry VI ; 
death of Lady Walpole, 20 August, 1737. 







I. 



THE Walpoles of Houghton in Norfolk, ten 
miles from King's Lynn, were an ancient 
family tracing their pedigree to a certain Reg- 
inald de Walpole who was living in the time 
of William the Conqueror. Under Henry II, 
there was a Sir Henry de Walpol of Houton 
and Walpol ; and thenceforward an orderly pro- 
cession of Henrys and Edwards and Johns (all 
"of Houghton") carried on the family name to 
the coronation of Charles II, when, in return 



12 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

for his vote and interest as a member of the 
Convention Parliament, one Edward Walpole 
was made a Knight of the Bath. This Sir 
Edward was in due time succeeded by his son, 
Robert, who married well, sat for Castle Ris- 
ing,* one of the two family boroughs (the other 
being King's Lynn, for which his father had 
been member), and reputably filled the com- 
bined offices of county magnate and colonel of 
militia. But his chief claim to distinction is 
that his eldest son, also a Robert, afterwards 
became the famous statesman and Prime Min- 
ister to whose " admirable prudence, fidelity, 
and success " England owes her prosperity 
under the first Hanoverians. It is not, however, 
with the life of " that corrupter of parliaments, 
that dissolute tipsy cynic, that courageous 
lover of peace and liberty, that great citizen, 
patriot, and statesman " — to borrow a passage 
from one of Mr. Thackeray's graphic vignettes 
— that these pages are concerned. It is more 
material to their purpose to note that in the 
year 1700, and on the 30th day of July in 
that year (being the day of the death of the 
Duke of Gloucester, heir presumptive to the 

* Another member for Castle Rising was Samuel Pepys, the Diarist. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 1 3 

crown of England), Robert Walpole junior, 
then a young man of three-and-twenty, and 
late scholar of King's College, Cambridge, 
took to himself a wife. The lady chosen was 
Miss Catherine Shorter, eldest daughter of 
John Shorter of Bybrook, an old Elizabethan 
red-brick house near Ashford in Kent. Her 
grandfather, Sir John Shorter, had been Lord 
Mayor of London under James II, and her 
father was a Norway timber merchant, having 
his wharf and counting-house on the South- 
wark side of the Thames, and his town resi- 
dence in Norfolk Street, Strand, where, in all 
probability, his daughter met her future hus- 
band.* They had a family of four sons and 
two daughters. One of the sons, William, 
died young. The third son Horatio f or 
Horace, born, as he himself tells us, on the 
24th September, 171 7, O. S., is the subject of 
this memoir. 

With the birth of Horace Walpole is con- 
nected a scandal so industriously repeated by 



* See note to page 107. Horace, an English name for an 

t " The name of Horatio I Englishman. In all my books 

dislike. It is theatrical; and not (and perhaps you will think of 

English. I have, ever since I was the numerosus Horatius) I so spell 

a youth, written and subscribed my name " ( Walpoliana, i, 62). 



14 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

his latter biographers, that (although it has re- 
ceived far more attention than it deserves) it can 
scarcely be left unnoticed here. He had, it is 
asserted, little in common, either in tastes or 
appearance, with his elder brothers Robert and 
Edward, and he was born eleven years after 
the rest of his father's children. This led to a 
suggestion, which first found definite expression 
in the Introductory Anecdotes supplied by 
Lady Louisa Stuart to Lord Wharncliffe's edi- 
tion of the works of her grandmother, Lady 
Mary Wortley Montagu.* It was to the effect 
that Horace was not the son of Sir Robert Wal- 
pole, but of one of his mother's admirers, Carr, 
Lord Hervey, elder brother of Pope's " Sporus," 
the Hervey of the Memoirs. It is advanced 
in favour of this supposition that his likeness to 
the Herveys, both physically and mentally, was 
remarkable ; that the whilom Catherine Shorter 
was flighty, indiscreet, and fond of admiration ; 
and that Sir Robert's cynical disregard of his 
wife's vagaries, as well as his own gallantries 

* It is also to be found asserted Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Ox- 

as a current-story in the Note ford, and the " noble, lovely, 

Books (unpublished) of the Duch- little Peggy "of her father's friend 

ess of Portland, the daughter of and protege, Matthew Prior. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 15 

(his second wife, Miss Skerret, had been his 
mistress), were matters of notoriety. On the 
other hand there is no indication that any suspi- 
cion of his parentage ever crossed the mind of 
Horace Walpole himself. His devotion to his 
mother was one of the most consistent traits in 
a character made up of many contradictions; 
and although between the frail and fastidious 
virtuoso and the boisterous, fox-hunting Prime 
Minister there could have been but little sym- 
pathy, the son seems nevertheless to have sedu- 
lously maintained a filial reverence for his father, 
of whose enemies and detractors he was, until 
his dying day, the implacable foe. Moreover, it 
must be remembered that, admirable as are Lady 
Stuart's recollections, in speaking of Horace 
Walpole, she is speaking of one whose caustic 
pen and satiric tongue had never spared the 
reputation of the vivacious lady whose grand- 
daughter she was. 

With this reference to what can be, at best, 
but an insoluble question, we may return to the 
story of Walpole's earlier years. Of his child- 
hood little is known beyond what he has him- 
self told in the Short Notes of my Life which 



1 6 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

he drew up for the use of Mr. Berry, the nomi- 
nal editor of his works.* His godfathers, he 
says, were the Duke of Grafton and his father's 
second brother, Horatio, who afterwards became 
Baron Walpole of Wolterton. His godmother 
was his aunt, the beautiful Dorothy Walpole, who 
escaping the snares of Lord Wharton, as related 
by Lady Stuart, had become the second wife of 
Charles, second Viscount Townshend. In 1724, 
he was "inoculated for the small-pox"; and in 
the following year was placed with his cousins, 
Lord Townshend's younger sons, at Bexley in 
Kent, under the charge of one Weston, son to 
the Bishop of Exeter of that name. In 1726, 
the same course was pursued at Twickenham, 
and in the winter months he went to Lord 
Townshend's. Much of his boyhood, however, 
must have been spent in the house "next the 
College " at Chelsea, of which his father became 
possessed about 1722. It still exists, with but 
little alteration, as the infirmary of the hospital, 
and Ward No. 7 is said to have been its drawing- 



* These, hereafter referred to as ing series of his Letters to Sir 
the Short Notes, are the chief Horace Mann,2 vols., 1844, and are 
authority for three parts of Wal- reprinted in Mr. Peter Cunning- 
pole's not very eventful life. They ham's edition of the Correspon- 
were first printed with the conclud- dence, vol. i (1857), pp. Ixi-lxxvii. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 1 7 

room. With this, or with some other reception- 
room at Chelsea, is connected one of the scanty 
anecdotes of this time. Once, when Walpole 
was a boy, there came to see his mother one of 
those formerly famous beauties chronicled by 
Anthony Hamilton — " la belle Jennings," after- 
wards Duchess of Tyrconnell. At this date 
she was a needy Jacobite seeking Lady Wal- 
pole's interest in order to obtain a pension. She 
no longer possessed those radiant charms which 
under Charles had revealed her even through 
the disguise of an orange-girl ; and now, says 
Walpole, annotating his own copy of the Me- 
moirs of Grammont, "her eyes being dim, and 
she full of flattery, she commended the beauty 
of the prospect ; but unluckily the room in 
which they sat looked only against the garden- 
wall." * 

Another of the few events of his boyhood 
which he records, illustrates rather the old prov- 
erb that " One half of the world knows not 
how the other half lives " than any particular 
phase of his biography. Going with his mother 

* Cunningham, i, 36, and ix, one of the prominent ornaments of 
519. The Duchess of Tyrconnell's the Great Bedchamber at Straw- 
portrait, copied by Milbourn from berry Hill (See A Description of 
the original at Lord Spencer's, was the Villa, etc., 1774, p. 138). 



1 8 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

to buy some bugles (beads), at the time when 
the opposition to his father was at its highest, 
he notes that having made her purchase, — beads 
were then out of fashion, and the shop was in 
some obscure alley in the City where lingered 
unfashionable things, — Lady Walpole bade the 
shopman send it home. Being asked whither, 
she replied "To Sir Robert Walpole's." "And 
who" — rejoined he coolly — "is Sir Robert 
Walpole ? " * But the most interesting inci- 
dent of his youth was the visit he paid to the 
King which he has himself related in Chapter i 
of the Reminiscences. How it came about he 
does not know, but at ten years old an over- 
mastering desire seized him to inspect His 
Majesty. This childish caprice was so strong 
that his mother, who seldom thwarted him, solic- 
ited the Duchess of Kendal (the maitresse en 
titre) to obtain for her son the honour of kissing 
King George's hand before he set out upon that 
visit to Hanover from which he was never to 
return. It was an unusual request, but being 
made by the Prime Minister's wife could scarcely 
be refused. To conciliate etiquette and avoid 
precedent, however, it was arranged that the 

* Walpole to the Miss Berry s, 5 March, 1791. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 19 

audience should be in private and at night. "Ac- 
cordingly, the night but one before the King 
began his last journey [i.e., on 1 June, 1727], my 
mother carried me at ten at night to the apart- 
ments of the Countess of Walsingham [Melusina 
de Schulemberg, the Duchess's reputed niece], 
on the ground floor, towards the garden at St. 
James's, which opened into that of her aunt . . . 
apartments occupied by George II after his 
Queen's death, and by his successive mistresses, 
the Countesses of Suffolk [Mrs. Howard] and 
Yarmouth [Madame de Walmoden]. Notice 
being given that the King was come down to 
supper, Lady Walsingham took me alone into 
the Duchess's ante-room, where we found alone 
the Kin£ and her. I knelt down and kissed his 
hand. He said a few words to me, and my con- 
ductress led me back to my mother. The per- 
son of the King is as perfect in my memory as 
if I saw him but yesterday. It was that of an 
elderly man, rather pale, and exactly like his 
pictures and coins ; not tall ; of an aspect rather 
good than august ; with a dark tie-wig, a plain 
coat, waistcoat and breeches of snuff-coloured 
cloth, with stockings of the same colour, and a 
blue ribband over all. So entirely was he my 



20 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

object that I do not believe I once looked at the 
Duchess, but as I could not avoid seeing her 
on entering the room, I remember that just be- 
yond His Majesty stood a very tall, lean, ill- 
favoured old lady ; but I did not retain the least 
idea of her features nor know what the colour 
of her dress was." * In the Walpoliana (p. 25) f 
Walpole is made to say that his introducer was 
his father, and that the King took him up in his 
arms and kissed him. Walpole's own written 
account is the more probable one. His audience 
must have been one of the last the King granted, 
for, as already stated, it was almost on the eve 
of his departure ; and ten days later when his 
chariot clattered swiftly into the court-yard of 
his brother's palace at Osnabruck, he lay dead in 
his seat, and the reign of his successor had begun. 
Although Walpole gives us a description of 
George I, he does not, of course, supply us with 
any portrait of himself. But in Mr. Peter Cun- 
ningham's excellent edition of the Correspondence, 

* Reminiscences of the Courts of ley soon after Walpole's death. 

George the First and Second, in It requires to be used with caution 

Cunningham's Corr. i, xciii - (see Quarterly Review, vol. lxxii, 

xciv. No. cxliv) ; and must not be con- 

t The book referred to is a fused with Lord Hardwicke's pri- 

" little lounging miscellany" of vately printed Walpoliana, 1783, 

notes and anecdotes by John Pink- which relate to Sir Robert Wal- 

erton, and was published by Bens- pole. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 21 

there is a copy of an oil-painting belonging (1 85 7) 
to Mrs. Bedford of Kensington, which, upon the 
faith of a Cupid who points with an arrow to 
the number ten upon a dial, may be accepted 
as representing him about the time of the above 
interview. It is a full length of a slight, effemi- 
nate-looking lad in a stiff-skirted coat, knee 
breeches, and open-breasted laced waistcoat, 
standing in a somewhat affected attitude at the 
side of the afore-mentioned sun-dial. He has 
dark, intelligent eyes, and a profusion of light 
hair curling abundantly about his ears and reach- 
ing to his neck. If the date given in the Short 
Notes be correct, he must have already become 
an Eton boy, since he says that he went to that 
school on the 26th April, 1727, and he adds in the 
Reminiscences that he shed a flood of tears for the 
King's death when, " with the other scholars at 
Eton College," he walked in procession to the 
proclamation of his successor. Of the cause of 
this emotion he seems rather doubtful, leaving 
us to attribute it, partly to the King's condescen- 
sion in gratifying his childish loyalty, partly to 
the feeling that as the Prime Minister's son it 
was incumbent on him to be more concerned 
than his schoolfellows, while the spectators, it is 



22 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

hinted, placed it to the credit of a third and 
not less cogent cause — the probability of that 
Minister's downfall. Of this, however, as he 
says, he could not have had the slightest con- 
ception. His tutor at Eton was Henry Bland, 
eldest son of the master of the school. " I re- 
member," — says Walpole, writing later to his 
relative and schoolfellow Conway, — "when I 
was at Eton, and Mr. Bland had set me an 
extraordinary task, I used sometimes to pique 
myself upon not getting it, because it was not 
immediately my school business. What ! learn 
more than I was absolutely forced to learn ! I 
felt the weight of learning that, for I was a 
blockhead and pushed up above my parts." 
That, as the son of the great Minister, he was 
pushed, is probably true ; but, despite his own 
disclaimer, it is clear that his abilities were by no 
means to be despised. Indeed one of the pieces 
justificatives in the story of Lady Louisa Stuart, 
though put forward for another purpose, is 
distinctly in favour of something more than 
average talent. Supporting her theory as to 
his birth by the statement that in his boyhood 
he was left so entirely in the hands of his mother 
as to have little acquaintance with his father, 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 23 

she goes on to say that " Sir Robert Walpole 
took scarcely any notice of him, till his pro- 
ficiency at Eton School, when a lad of some 
standing, drew his attention, and proved that, 
whether he had, or had not, a right to the name 
he went by, he was likely to do it honour."* 
Whatever this may be held to prove, it cer- 
tainly proves that he was not the blockhead he 
declares himself to have been. 

Among his schoolmates he made many 
friends. For his cousins, Henry (afterwards 
Marshal) Conway and Lord Hertford, Con- 
way's elder brother, he formed an attachment 
which lasted through life, and many of his best 
letters were written to these relatives. Other 
associates were the later lyrist, Charles Han- 
bury Williams, and the famous wit, George 
Augustus Selwyn, both of whom, if the child 
be father to the man, must be supposed to have 
had unusual attractions for their equally witty 
schoolmate. Another contemporary at school, 
to whom, in after life, he addressed many let- 
ters, was William Cole, subsequently to develop 
into a laborious antiquary, and probably already 

* This is quoted by Mr. Hay ward Stuart says nothing to indicate this 
and others as if the last words were (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's 
Sir Robert Walpole's. But Lady Letters, etc., 1887, i, xciii). 



24 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

exhibiting proclivities towards "tall copies" and 
black letter. But his chiefest friends, no doubt, 
were grouped in the two bodies christened 
respectively the "triumvirate" and the "quad- 
ruple alliance." 

Of these the "triumvirate" was the less im- 
portant. It consisted of Walpole and the two 
sons of Brigadier-General Edward Montagu. 
George, the elder, afterwards M. P. for North- 
ampton, and the recipient of some of the most 
genuine specimens of his friend's correspon- 
dence, is described in advanced age as " a gen- 
tleman-like body of the vieille cour" usually 
attended by a younger brother, who was still 
a midshipman at the mature age of sixty, and 
whose chief occupation consisted in carrying 
about his elder's snuff-box. Charles Montagu, 
the remaining member of the "triumvirate," be- 
came a Lieut. -General and Knight of the Bath. 
But it was George, who had "a fine sense of 
humour, and much curious information," who 
was Walpole's favourite. "Dear George" — he 
writes to him from Cambridge — "were not the 
playing fields at Eton food for all manner of 
flights ? No old maid's gown, though it had 
been tormented into all the fashions from King 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 25 

James to King George, ever underwent so many 
transformations as those poor plains have in 
my idea. At first I was contented with tend- 
ing a visionary flock, and sighing some pas- 
toral name to the echo of the cascade under 
the bridge. How happy should I have been to 
have had a kingdom only for the pleasure of 
being driven from it, and living disguised in an 
humble vale ! As I got further into Virgil and 
Clelia, I found myself transported from Arcadia 
to the garden of Italy, and saw Windsor Castle 
in no other view than the Capitoli immobile 
saxum." Further on he makes an admission 
which need scarcely surprise us. "I can't say 
I am sorry I was never quite a schoolboy : an 
expedition against bargemen, or a match at 
cricket, may be very pretty things to recollect ; 
but, thank my stars, I can remember things 
that are very near as pretty. The beginning 
of my Roman history was spent in the asylum, 
or conversing in Egeria's hallowed grove ; not 
in thumping and pummelling King Amulius's 
herdsmen."* The description seems to indicate 
a schoolboy of a rather refined and effeminate 
type, who would probably fare ill with robuster 

* Letter to Montagu, 6 May, 1 736. 



26 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

spirits. But Walpole's social position doubt- 
less preserved him from the persecution which 
that variety generally experiences at the hands 
— literally the hands — of the tyrants of the 
playground. 

The same delicacy of organisation seems to 
have been a main connecting link in the second 
or " quadruple alliance" already referred to — 
an alliance, it may be, less intrinsically intimate, 
but more obviously cultivated. The most im- 
portant figure in this quartet was a boy as frail 
and delicate as Walpole himself, " with a broad, 
pale brow, sharp nose and chin, large eyes, and 
a pert expression," who was afterwards to 
become famous as the author of one of the most 
popular poems in the language, the Elegy writ- 
ten in a Country Church Yard. Thomas Gray 
was at this time about thirteen, and conse- 
quently somewhat older than his schoolmate. 
Another member of the association was Richard 
West, also slightly older, a grandson of the 
Bishop Burnet who wrote the History of My 
Own Time, and son of the Lord Chancellor of 
Ireland. West, a slim, thoughtful lad, was the 
most precocious genius of the party, already 
making verses in Latin and English, and mak- 



Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 27 

ing them even in his sleep. The fourth member 
was Thomas Ashton, afterwards Fellow of Eton 
College and Rector of St. Botolph, Bishops- 
gate. His friendship with Walpole was not 
prolonged in later life, and he fades early out 
of the group which may be pictured saunter- 
ing arm in arm through the Eton meadows, or 
threading the avenue which is still known as 
the " Poet's Walk." Each of the four had his 
sobriquet, either conferred by himself or by his 
schoolmates. Walpole was Tydeus, Gray, Oros- 
mades, West, Almanzor, and Ashton, Plato. 

On 27 May, 1 73 1, Walpole was entered at 
Lincoln's Inn, his father intending him for the 
law. "But" — he says in the Short Notes — "I 
never went thither, not caring for the profes- 
sion." On 23 September, 1734, he left Eton 
for good, and no further particulars of his school- 
days survive. But that they were not without 
their pleasant memories may be inferred from 
the letters already quoted, and especially from 
one to George Montagu written some time after- 
wards upon the occasion of a visit to the once 
familiar scenes. It is dated from the Chris- 
topher Inn, a famous old hostelry, well known 
to Eton boys: — "The Christopher. Lord! 



28 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

how great I used to think anybody just landed 
at the Christopher ! But here are no boys for 
me to send for — here I am, like Noah, just 
returned into his old world again, with all sorts 
of queer feels about me. By the way, the clock 
strikes the old cracked sound — I recollect so 
much and remember so little — and want to 
play about — and am so afraid of my play- 
fellows — and am ready to shirk Ashton — and 
can't help making fun of myself — and envy a 
dame over the way, that has just locked in her 
boarders, and is going to sit down in a little hot 
parlour to a very bad supper, so comfortably ! 
and I could be so jolly a dog if I did not fat, 
which, by the way, is the first time the word was 
ever applicable to me. In short, I should be 
out of all bounds if I was to tell you half I feel, 
how young again I am one minute and how old 
the next. But do come and feel with me, when 
you will — to-morrow — adieu ! If I don't com- 
pose myself a little more before Sunday morning, 
when Ashton is to preach ["Plato" at the date 
of this letter had already taken orders], I shall 
certainly be in a bill for laughing at church; 
but how to help it, to see him in the pulpit, 
when the last time I saw him here, was stand- 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 29 

ing up funking over against a conduit to be 
catechised."* 

This letter, of which the date is not given, 
but which Cunningham places after March, 
1737, must have been written some time after 
he had taken up his residence at Cambridge in 
his father's college of King's. This he did in 
March, 1735, following an interval of residence 
in London. By this time the "quadruple alli- 
ance" had been broken up by the defection of 
West, who, much against his will, had gone to 
Christ Church, Oxford. Ashton (whom we have 
seen above an ordained clergyman) and Gray 
had however been a year at Cambridge, the 
latter as a fellow-commoner of Peterhouse, the 
former at Walpole's own college, King's. Cole 
and the Conways were also at Cambridge, so 
that much of the old intercourse must have been 
continued. Walpole's record of his university 
studies is of the most scanty kind. He does 
little more than give us the names of his tutors, 
public and private. In civil law he attended 
the lectures of Dr. Dickens of Trinity Hall ; in 
anatomy, those of Dr. Battie. French, he says, 
he had learnt at Eton. His Italian master at 

* Walpole to Montagu, no date. Cunningham, 1857, i, 15. 
3* 



30 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

Cambridge was Signor Piazza (who had at least 
an Italian name ! ), and his instructor in drawing 
was the miniaturist Bernard Lens, the teacher 
of the Duke of Cumberland and the Princesses 
Mary and Louisa. Lens was the author of a 
New and Complete Drawing Book for curious 
young Gentlemen and Ladies that study and 
practice the noble and commendable Art of 
Drazving, Colouring, etc., and is kindly referred 
to in the later Anecdotes of Painting. In mathe- 
matics, which Walpole seems to have hated as 
cordially as Swift and Goldsmith and Gray did, 
he sat at the feet of the blind Professor Nicholas 
Saunderson, author of the Elements of Algebra. 
Years afterwards (a propos of a misguided en- 
thusiast who had put the forty-seventh propo- 
sition of Euclid into Latin verse) he tells one 
of his correspondents the result of these min- 
istrations : " I . . . was always so incapable of 
learning mathematics, that I could not even get 
by heart the multiplication table, as blind Pro- 
fessor Saunderson honestly told me, above three- 
score years ago, when I went to his lectures at 
Cambridge. After the first fortnight he said 
to me, ' Young man, it would be cheating you 
to take your money ; for you can never learn 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 31 

what I am trying to teach you.' I was exceed- 
ingly mortified, and cried ; for, being a Prime 
Minister's son, I had firmly believed all the 
flattery with which I had been assured that 
my parts were capable of anything. I paid a 
private instructor for a year ; but, at the year's 
end, was forced to own Saunderson had been in 
the right." * This private instructor was in all 
probability Mr. Trevigar, who, Walpole says, 
read lectures to him in mathematics and philos- 
ophy. From other expressions in his letters, 
it must be inferred that his progress in the 
dead languages, if respectable, was not brilliant. 
He confesses, on one occasion, his inability to 
help Cole in a Latin epitaph, and he tells Pink- 
erton that he never was a good Greek scholar. 
His correspondence at this period, chiefly 
addressed to West and George Montagu, is not 
extensive. But it is already characteristic. In 
one of his letters to Montagu he encloses a 
translation of a little French dialogue between 
a turtle-dove and a passer-by. The verses are 
of no particular merit, but in the comment one 
recognises a cast of style soon to be familiar. 
"You will excuse this gentle nothing, I mean 

* Walpole to Miss Berry, 16 Aug., 1796. 



32 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

mine, when I tell you I translated it out of pure 
ofood- nature for the use of a disconsolate wood- 
pigeon in our grove, that was made a widow by 
the barbarity of a gun. She coos and calls me 
so movingly, 'twould touch your heart to hear 
her, I protest to you it grieves me to pity her. 
She is so allicholly * as any thing. I'll warrant 
you now she's as sorry as one of us would be. 
Well, good man, he's gone and he died like a 
lamb. She's an unfortunate woman, but she 
must have patience." f In another letter to 
West, after expressing his astonishment that 
Gray should be at Burnham in Buckingham- 
shire, and yet be too indolent to revisit the old 
Eton haunts in his vicinity, he goes on to gird 
at the university curriculum. At Cambridge, 
he says, they are supposed to betake themselves 
"to some trade, as logic, philosophy, or mathe- 
matics." But he has been used to the delicate 
food of Parnassus, and can never condescend to 
the grosser studies of Alma Mater. ' ' Sober cloth 
of syllogism colour suits me ill ; or, what's worse, 
I hate clothes that one must prove to be of 
no colour at all. If the Muses coelique vias et 

* " Indeed, she is given too much to allicholly and musing " (Merry 
Wives of Windsor, act i, sc. iv). 
t Walpole to Montagu, 30 May, 1736. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 33 

sidera monstrent, and qua vi maria alta tumes- 
cant ; why accipiant : but 'tis thrashing, to study 
philosophy in the abstruse authors. I am not 
against cultivating these studies, as they are 
certainly useful ; but then they quite neglect 
all polite literature, all knowledge of this world. 
Indeed, such people have not much occasion for 
this latter ; for they shut themselves up from it, 
and study till they know less than any one. 
Great mathematicians have been of great use ; 
but the generality of them are quite uncon- 
versible : they frequent the stars, sub pedibus- 
que vident nubes, but they can't see through 
them. I tell you what I see; that by living 
amongst them I write of nothing else : my let- 
ters are all parallelograms, two sides equal to 
two sides ; and every paragraph an axiom, that 
tells you nothing but what every mortal almost 
knows." * In an earlier note he has been on a 
tour to Oxford, and, with a premonition of the 
future connoisseur of Strawberry Hill, criticises 
the gentlemen's seats on the road. "Coming 
back we saw Easton Neston [in Northampton- 
shire], a seat of Lord Pomfret, where in an old 
greenhouse is a wonderful fine statue of Tully, 

* Walpole to West, 17 Aug., 1736. 



34 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

haranguing a numerous assembly of decayed 
emperors, vestal virgins with new noses, Colos- 
sus's, Venus's, headless carcases and carcaseless 
heads, pieces of tombs, and hieroglyphics."* A 
little later he has been to his father's seat at 
Houghton : " I am returned again to Cam- 
bridge, and can tell what I never expected, that 
I like Norfolk. Not any of the ingredients, 
as Hunting or Country Gentlemen, for I had 
nothing to do with them, but the county, which 
a little from Houghton is woody and full of' 
delightful prospects. I went to see Norwich 
and Yarmouth, both of which I like exceedingly. 
I spent my time at Houghton for the first week 
almost alone ; we have a charming Garden all 
Wilderness, much adapted to my Romantick 
inclinations." In after life the liking for Norfolk 
here indicated does not seem to have continued, 
especially when his father's death had withdrawn 
a part of its attractions. " He hated Norfolk " — 
says Mr. Cunningham. He did not care for 
Norfolk ale, Norfolk turnips, Norfolk dumplings, 
or Norfolk turkeys. Its flat, sandy, aguish scen- 
ery was not to his taste. He preferred " the rich 
blue prospects " of his mother's county, Kent. 

* Walpole to Montagu, 20 May, 1736. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 35 

Of literary effort while at Cambridge Wal- 
pole's record is not great. In 1736, he was one 
of the group of university poets — Gray and 
West being also of the number — who ad- 
dressed congratulatory verses to Frederick, 
Prince of Wales, upon his marriage with the 
Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha ; and he wrote 
a poem (which is reprinted in Vol. i of his 
works) to the memory of the founder of King's 
College, Henry VI. This is dated 2 February, 
1738. In the interim Lady Walpole died. Her 
son's references to his loss display the most 
genuine regret. In a letter to Charles Lyttleton 
(afterwards the well-known Dean of Exeter, 
and Bishop of Carlisle) which is not included 
in Cunningham's edition, and is apparently 
dated in error September, 1732, instead of 
1 737,* he dwells with much feeling on " the sur- 
prising calmness and courage which my dear 
Mother show'd before her death. I believe few 
women wou'd behave so well, and I am certain 
no man could behave better. For three or four 
days before she dyed, she spoke of it with less 
indifference than one speaks of a cold; and 
while she was sensible, which she was within 

* Notes and Queries, 2 January, 1869. 



36 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

her two last hours, she discovered no manner 
of apprehension." That his warm affection for 
her was well known to his friends may be in- 
ferred from a passage in one of Gray's letters to 
West: — "While I write to you, I hear the bad 
news of Lady Walpole's death on Saturday 
night last [20 Aug., 1737]. Forgive me if the 
thought of what my poor Horace must feel on 
that account obliges me to have done." * Lady 
Walpole was buried in Westminster Abbey, 
where, on her monument in Henry Vllth's 
Chapel, may be read the piously eulogistic in- 
scription which her youngest son composed to 
her memory — an inscription not easy to recon- 
cile in all its terms with the current estimate of 
her character. But in August, 1737, she was 
considerably over fifty, and had probably long 
outlived the scandals of which she had been the 
subject in the days when Kneller and Eckardt 
painted her as a young and beautiful woman. 



* Gray's Works by Gosse, 1884, ii, 9. 



CHAPTER II. 

Patent places tinder Government ; starts with Gray on the Grand 
Tour, March, 1739 J from Dover to Paris ; life at Paris ; 
Versailles; the Convent of the Chartreux j life at Rheims ; a 
fete galante ; the Grande Chartreuse ; starts for Italy j the 
episode of Tory ; Turin, Genoa, academical exercises at 
Bologna ; life at Florence j Rome, Naples, Herculaneum j 
the pen of Radicofani j English at Florence ; Lady Mary 
Worthy Montagu ; preparing for home ; quarrel with Gray; 
IValpole's apologia ; his illness, and return to England. 









■ 




II. 

THAT, in those piping days of patronage, 
when even very young ladies of quality 
drew pay as cornets of horse, the son of the 
Prime Minister of England should be left un- 
provided for, was not to be expected. While he 
was still resident at Cambridge, lucrative sine- 
cures came to Horace Walpole. Soon after his 
mother's death, his father appointed him In- 
spector of Imports and Exports in the Custom 
House, a post which he resigned in January, 

4 4 1 



42 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

1738, on succeeding Colonel William Town- 
shend as Usher of the Exchequer. When, later 
in the year, he came of age (17 September), he 
"took possession of two other little patent places 
in the Exchequer, called Comptroller of the 
Pipe, and Clerk of the Estreats," which had 
been held for him by a substitute. In 1782, 
when he still filled them, the two last-mentioned 
offices produced together about £s°° P er annum, 
while the Ushership of the Exchequer, at the 
date of his obtaining it, was reckoned to be 
worth ^900 a year. " From that time (he 
says) I lived on my own income, and travelled 
at my own expense; nor did I during my father's 
life receive from him but ^250 at different times; 
which I say, not in derogation of his extreme 
tenderness and goodness to me, but to show 
that I was content with what he had given to 
me, and that from the age of twenty I was no 
charge to my family." * 

He continued at King's College for some time 
after he had attained his majority, only quitting 
it formally in March, 1 739, not without regretful 
memories of which his future correspondence 
was to bear the traces. If he had neglected 

* Account of my Conduct, etc. Works, 1798, ii, 363-70. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 43 

mathematics, and only moderately courted the 
classics, he had learnt something of the polite 
arts and of modern continental letters — studies 
which would naturally lead his inclination in the 
direction of the inevitable ''grand tour." Two 
years earlier he had very unwillingly declined 
an invitation from George Montagu and Lord 
Conway to join them in a visit to Italy. Since 
that date his desire for foreign travel, fostered 
no doubt by long conversations with Gray, had 
grown stronger, and he resolved to see "the 
palms and temples of the south " after the ortho- 
dox eighteenth-century fashion. To think of 
Gray in this connection was but natural, and he 
accordingly invited his friend (who had now 
quitted Cambridge, and was vegetating rather 
disconsolately in his father's house on Cornhill) 
to be his travelling companion. Walpole was 
to act as paymaster; but Gray was to be inde- 
pendent. Furthermore Walpole made a will 
under which, if he died abroad, Gray was to be 
his sole legatee. Dispositions so advantageous 
and considerate scarcely admitted of refusal, 
even if Gray had been backward, which he was 
not. The two friends accordingly set out for 
Paris. Walpole makes the date of departure 



44 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

10 March, 1739; Gray says they left Dover at 
twelve on the 29th. 

The first records of the journey come from 
Amiens in a letter written by Gray to his mother. 
After a rough passage across the Straits, they 
reached Calais at five. Next day they started 
for Boulogne in the then new-fangled invention, 
a post-chaise — a vehicle which Gray describes 
"as of much greater use than beauty, resembling 
an ill-shaped chariot, only with the door opening 
before instead of [at] the side." Of Bou- 
logne they see little, and of Montreuil (where 
later Sterne engaged La Fleur) Gray's only 
record, besides the indifferent fare, is that " Ma- 
dame the hostess made her appearance in long 
lappets of bone lace, and a sack of linsey-wool- 
sey." From Montreuil they go by Abbeville to 
Amiens, where they visit the cathedral, and the 
chapels of the Jesuits and Ursuline Nuns. But 
the best part of this first letter is the little vig- 
nette with which it (or rather as much of it as 
Mason published) concludes. " The country we 
have passed through hitherto has been flat, open, 
but agreeably diversified with villages, fields 
well-cultivated, and little rivers. On every hil- 
lock is a wind-mill, a crucifix, or a Virgin Mary 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 45 

dressed in flowers, and a sarcenet robe : one sees 
not many people or carriages on the road ; now 
and then indeed you meet a strolling friar, a 
countryman with his great muff, or a woman 
riding astride on a little ass, with short petti- 
coats, and a great head-dress of blue wool."* 

The foregoing letter is dated the 1st April, 
and it speaks of reaching Paris on the 3rd. But 
it was only on the evening of Saturday the 9th 
that they rolled into the French capital " driving 
through the streets a long while before they 
knew where they were." Walpole had wisely 
resolved not to hurry, and they had besides 
broken down at Luzarches, and lingered at St. 
Denis over the curiosities of the abbey, particu- 
larly an onyx vase carved with Bacchus and the 
nymphs, of which they had dreamed ever since. 
At Paris they found a warm welcome among 
the English residents — notably from Mason's 
patron, Lord Holdernesse, and Walpole's cous- 
ins, the Conways. They seem to have plunged 
at once into the pleasures of the place, pleasures 
in which, according to Walpole, cards and eat- 
ing played far too absorbing a part. At Lord 
Holdernesse's they met at supper the famous 

* Gray's Works,hy Gosse, 1884, ii, 18-19. 
4* 



46 Horace Walpoie : A Memoir. 

author of Manon Lescaut, M. l'Abbe Antoine 
Francois Prev6st d'Exiles, who had just put 
forth the final volume of his tedious and scandal- 
ous Histoire de M. Cleveland. They went to 
the spectacle of Pandore at the Salle des Ma- 
chines of the Tuileries ; and they went to the 
opera, where they saw the successful Ballet 
de la Paix, a curious hotch-pot, from Gray's 
description, of cracked voices and incongruous 
mythology. With the Comedie Francaise they 
were better pleased, although Walpoie, strange 
to say, unlike Goldsmith ten years later, was 
not able to commend the performance of Moli- 
ere's L A vare. They saw Mademoiselle Gaussin 
(as yet unrivalled by the unrisen Mademoiselle 
Clairon) in La Noue's tragedy of Mahomet 
Second, then recently produced, with Dufresne 
in the leading male part; and they also saw the 
prince of petits-maitres, Grandval, acting with 
Dufresne's sister, Mademoiselle Jeanne-Fran- 
coise Quinault (an actress "somewhat in Mrs. 
Clive's way," says Gray), in the Philosophe 
Marie of Nericault Destouches, a charming 
comedy already transferred to the English 
stage in the version by John Kelly of The 
Universal Spectator. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 47 

Theatres, however, are not the only amuse- 
ments which the two travellers chronicle to the 
home-keeping West. A great part of their 
time is spent in seeing churches and palaces full 
of pictures. Then there is the inevitable visit 
to Versailles which, in sum, they concur in con- 
demning. "The great front," says Walpole, 
" is a lumber of littleness, composed of black 
brick, stuck full of bad old busts, and fringed 
with gold rails." Gray (he says) likes it ; but 
Gray is scarcely more complimentary, — at all 
events is quite as hard upon the facade, using 
almost the same phrases of depreciation. It is 
"a huge heap of littleness," in hue "black, dirty 
red, and yellow ; the first proceeding from stone 
changed by age ; the second from a mixture of 
brick; and the last from a profusion of tarnished 
gilding. You cannot see a more disagreeable 
tottt ensemble ; and, to finish the matter, it is all 
stuck over in many places with small busts of a 
tawny hue between every two windows." The 
garden, however, pleases him better ; nothing 
could be vaster and more magnificent than the 
coup d'ceil with its fountains and statues and 
grand canal. But the "general taste of the place" 
is petty and artificial — "all is forced, all is 



48 Horace Walpolc : A Memoir. 

constrained about you; statues and vases sowed 
everywhere without distinction ; sugar loaves 
and minced pies of yew ; scrawl work of box, 
and little squirting jets cVeau, besides a great 
sameness in the walks, cannot help striking one 
at first sight, not to mention the silliest of laby- 
rinths, and all vEsop's fables in water."* "The 
garden is littered with statues and fountains, 
each of which has its tutelary deity. In particu- 
lar, the elementary god of fire solaces himself in 
one. In another, Enceladus, in lieu of a moun- 
tain, is overwhelmed with many waters. There 
are avenues of water pots, who disport them- 
selves in squirting up cascadelins. In short, 
'tis a garden for a great child. "f The day fol- 
lowing, being Whitsunday, they witness a grand 
ceremonial — the installation of nine Knights of 
the Saint Esprit — "high mass celebrated with 
music, great crowd, much incense, King, Queen, 
Dauphin, Mesdames, Cardinals, and Court : 
Knights arrayed by His Majesty ; reverences 
before the altar, not bows but curtsies ; stiff 
hams: much tittering among the ladies; trum- 
pets, kettle-drums, and fifes." J 

* Gray to West, 22 May, 1739. t Walpole to West, no date, 1739. 
X Gray to West, 22 May, 1 739. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 49 

It is Gray who thus summarises the show. 
But we must go to Walpole for the account of 
another expedition, the visit to the Convent of 
the Chartreux, the uncouth horror of which, with 
its gloomy chapel and narrow cloisters, seems 
to have fascinated the Gothic soul of the future 
author of the Castle of Otranto. Here, in one 
of the cells, they make the acquaintance of a 
fresh initiate into the order — the account of 
whose surroundings suggests rather retirement 
than solitude. "He was extremely civil, and 
called himself Dom Victor. We have promised 
to visit him often. Their habit is all white: but 
besides this he was infinitely clean in his per- 
son ; and his apartment and garden, which he 
keeps and cultivates without any assistance, 
was neat to a degree. He has four little rooms, 
furnished in the prettiest manner, and hung with 
good prints. One of them is a library, and 
another a gallery. He has several canary-birds 
disposed in a pretty manner in breeding cages. 
In his garden was a bed of good tulips in 
bloom, flowers and fruit-trees, and all neatly 
kept. They are permitted at certain hours to 
talk to strangers, but never to one another, or 
to go out of their convent." In the same insti- 



5<3 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

tution they saw Le Sueur's history (in pictures) 
of St. Bruno, the founder of the Chartreux. 
Walpole had not yet studied Raphael at 
Rome, but these pictures, he considered, ex- 
celled everything he had seen in England and 
Paris.* 

" From thence [Paris]," say Walpole's 
Short Notes, " we went with my cousin 
Henry Conway, to Rheims, in Champagne, 
[and] staid there three months." One of their 
chief objects was to improve themselves in 
French. "You must not wonder," he tells 
West, ''if all my letters resemble dictionaries, 
with French on one side and English on t'other; 
I deal in nothing else at present, and talk a 
couple of words of each language alternately 
from morning till night." f But he does not 
seem to have yet developed his later passion 
for letter-writing, and the "account of our situa- 
tion and proceedings" is still delegated to Gray, 
some of whose despatches at this time are not 
preserved. There is, however, one from Rheims 
to Gray's mother which gives a vivid idea of 
the ancient French Cathedral city, slumbering 
in its vast vine-clad plain, with its picturesque 

* Walpole to West, no date, 1739. t Walpole to West, 18 June, 1739. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 51 

old houses and lonely streets, its long walks 
under the ramparts, and its monotonous frog- 
haunted moat. They have no want of society, 
for Henry Conway procured them introductions 
everywhere; but the Rhemois are more con- 
strained, less familiar, less hospitable than the 
Parisians. Quadrille is the almost invariable 
amusement, interrupted by one entertainment 
(for the Rhemois as a rule give neither din- 
ners nor suppers), to wit, a five o'clock gouter, 
which is "a service of wine, fruits, cream, sweet- 
meats, crawfish, and cheese," after which they sit 
down to cards again. Occasionally, however, 
the demon of impromptu flutters these "set, 
gray lives," and (like Dr. Johnson) even 
Rheims must "have a frisk." "For instance," 
says Gray, " the other evening we happened 
to be got together in a company of eighteen 
people, men and women of the best fashion 
here, at a garden in the town to walk ; when 
one of the ladies bethought herself of asking, 
Why should we not sup here ? Immediately 
the cloth was laid by the side of a fountain 
under the trees, and a very elegant supper 
served up; after which another said, Come, 
let us sing; and directly began herself. From 



52 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

singing we insensibly fell to dancing, and sing- 
ing in a round ; when somebody mentioned the 
violins and immediately a company of them 
was ordered. Minuets were begun in the open 
air, and then came country dances, which held 
till four o'clock next morning; at which hour 
the gayest lady there proposed, that such as 
were weary should get into their coaches, and 
the rest of them should dance before them 
with the music in the van ; and in this manner 
we paraded through all the principal streets of 
the city, and waked everybody in it." Walpole, 
adds Gray, would have made this entertainment 
chronic. But " the women did not come into 
it," and shrank back decorously "to their dull 
cards, and usual formalities."* 

At Rheims the travellers lingered on in the 
hope of being joined by Selwyn and George 
Montagu. In September they left Rheims for 
Dijon, the superior attractions of which town 
made them rather regret their comparative 
rustication of the last three months. From 
Dijon they passed southward to Lyons, whence 
Gray sent to West (then drinking the Tunbridge 
waters) a daintily elaborated conceit touching 

* Gray's Works, by Gosse, 1884, ii, 30. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 53 

the junction of the Rhone and the Saone. While 
at Lyons they made an excursion to Geneva to 
escort Henry Conway, who had up to this time 
been their companion, on his way to that place. 
They took a roundabout route in order to visit 
the Convent of the Grand Chartreuse, and on 
the 28th Walpole writes to West from " a Ham- 
let among the mountains of Savoy [Echelles]." 
He is to undergo many transmigrations, he 
says, before he ends his letter. "Yesterday I 
was a shepherd of Dauphine ; to-day an Alpine 
savage ; to-morrow a Carthusian monk ; and 
Friday a Swiss Calvinist." When he next 
takes up his pen, he has passed through his 
third stage, and visited the Chartreuse. With 
the convent itself neither Gray nor his com- 
panions seem to have been much impressed, 
probably because their expectations had been 
indefinite. For the approach and the situation 
they had only enthusiasm. Gray is the accred- 
ited landscape-painter of the party, but here 
even Walpole breaks out: "The road, West, 
the road ! winding round a prodigious mountain, 
and surrounded with others, all shagged with 
hanging woods, obscured with pines, or lost in 
clouds ! Below, a torrent breaking through 



54 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

cliffs, and tumbling - through fragments of rocks ! 
Sheets of cascades forcing their silver speed 
down channelled precipices, and hasting into 
the roughened river at the bottom ! Now and 
then an old foot bridge, with a broken rail, a 
leaning cross, a cottage, or the ruin of an hermit- 
age ! This sounds too bombast and too romantic 
to one that has not seen it, too cold for one that 
has. If I could send you my letter post between 
two lovely tempests that echoed each other's 
wrath, you might have some idea of this noble 
roaring scene, as you were reading it. Almost 
on the summit, upon a fine verdure, but without 
any prospect, stands the Chartreuse." * 

The foregoing passage is dated Aix-in-Savoy, 
30 September. Two days later, passing by 
Annecy, they came to Geneva. Here they 
stayed a week to see Conway settled, and made 
a "solitary journey" back to Lyons, but by a 
different road, through the spurs of the Jura 
and across the plains of La Bresse. At Lyons 
they found letters awaiting them from Sir 
Robert Walpole, desiring his son to go to Italy, 
a proposal with which Gray, only too glad to 
exchange the over-commercial city of Lyons for 

* Walpole to West, 28 Sept.— 2 Oct., 1739. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 5 5 

"the place in the world that best deserves see- 
ing," was highly delighted. Accordingly we 
speedily find them duly equipped with "beaver 
bonnets, beaver gloves, beaver stockings, muffs, 
and bearskins" en route for the Alps. At the 
foot of Mont Cenis their chaise was taken to 
pieces and loaded on mules, and they them- 
selves were transferred to low matted legless 
chairs carried on poles — a not unperilous mode 
of progression, when, as in this case, quarrels 
took place among the bearers. But the tragedy 
of the journey happened before they had quitted 
the chaise. Walpole had a fat little black spaniel 
of King Charles's breed, named Tory, and he 
had let the little creature out of the carriage for 
the air. While it was waddling along con- 
tentedly at the horses' heads, a gaunt wolf 
rushed out of a fir wood, and exit poor Tory 
before any one had time to snap a pistol. In 
later years, Gray would perhaps have celebrated 
this mishap as elegantly as he sang the death 
of his friend's favourite cat, but in these pre- 
poetic days, he restricts himself to calling it an 
"odd accident enough." * 

* Tory, however, was not ilia- Greene, once of Bennet College ; 
chrymabilis. He found his vales and in referring to this, thirty- 
sacer in one Edward Burnaby five years later, Walpole explains 



56 Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 

"After eight days' journey through Green- 
land," — as Gray puts it to West, — they reached 
Turin, where among other English, they found 
Pope's friend, Joseph Spence, Professor of 
Poetry at Oxford. Beyond Walpole's going to 
Court, and their visiting an extraordinary play 
called La Rapprezantazione delV Anima Dam- 
nata (for the benefit of an Hospital), a full and 
particular account of which is contained in one 
of Spence's letters to his mother,* nothing 
remarkable seems to have happened to them in 
the Piedmontese capital. From Turin they 
went on to Genoa, — "the happy country where 
huge lemons grow" (as Gray quotes, not text- 
ually, from Waller), — whose blue sea and vine- 
trellises they quit reluctantly for Bologna, by 
way of Tortona, Piacenza, Parma (where they 
inspect the Correggios in the Duomo), Reggio, 
and Modena. At Bologna, in the absence of 
introductions, picture-seeing is their main occu- 
pation. " Except pictures and statues," writes 
Walpole, "we are not very fond of sights.". . . 



how Tory got his name. " His Paris to Lord Conway, and he to 

god-mother was the widow of me" {Walpole to Cole, 10 Dec, 

Alderman Parsons [Humphrey 1 775)- 

Parsons of Goldsmith's " black * Spence's Anecdotes, by Singer, 

champagne"], who gave him at 2nd edn., 1858, pp. 305-8. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 57 

" Now and then we drop in at a procession, 
or a high-mass, hear the music, enjoy a strange 
attire, and hate the foul monkhood. Last week 
was the feast of the Immaculate Conception. 
On the eve we went to the Franciscans' church 
to hear the academical exercises. There were 
moult and moult clergy, about two dozen dames, 
that treated one another with illustrissima and 
brown kisses, the vice-legate, the gonfalonier, 
and some senate. The vice-legate ... is a 
young personable person, of about twenty, and 
had on a mighty pretty cardinal-kind of habit ; 
'twou'd make a delightful masquerade dress. 
We asked his name : Spinola. What, a nephew 
of the cardinal-legate ? Signor, no : ma credo 
che gli sia qualche cosa. He sat on the right- 
hand with the gonfalonier in two purple fau- 
teuils. Opposite was a throne of crimson 
damask with the device of the Academy, the 
Gelati,* and trimmings of gold. Here sat at a 

* " Jarchius has taken the trou- Ociosi, Arcadi, Confusi, Dubbiosi, 

ble to give us a list of those clubs, etc. There are few of these who 

or academies [i. e., the academies have not published their trans- 

of Italy], which amount to five actions, and scarce a member who 

hundred and fifty, each distin- is not looked upon as the most 

guished by somewhat whimsical famous man in the world, at 

in the name. The academies of home" (Goldsmith, in The Bee, 

Bologna, for instance, are divided No. vi, for io November, 1759). 
into the Abbandonati, the Ausiosi, 

5 



58 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

table, in black, the head of the Academy, between 
the orator and the first poet. At two semi- 
circular tables on either hand sat three poets 
and three; silent among many candles. The 
chief made a little introduction, the orator a 
long Italian vile harangue. Then the chief, the 
poet, the poets, — who were a Franciscan, an 
Olivetan, an old abbe, and three lay, — read 
their compositions ; and to-day they are pasted 
up in all parts of the town. As we came out of 
the church, we found all the convent and neigh- 
bouring houses lighted all over with lanthorns 
of red and yellow paper, and two bonfires."* 

In the Christmas of 1739, the friends crossed 
the Apennines, and entered Florence. If they 
had wanted introductions at Bologna, there was 
no lack of them in Tuscany, and they were to 
find one friend who afterwards figured largely 
in Walpole's correspondence. This was Mr. 
(afterwards Sir Horace) Mann, British Min- 
ister Plenipotentiary at the Court of Florence. 
" He is the best and most obliging person in 
the world," says Gray, and his house, with a 
brief interval, was their residence for fifteen 
months. Their letters from Florence are less 

* Walpole to West, no date, 1739. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 59 

interesting than those from which quotations 
have already been made, while their amuse- 
ments seem to have been more independent 
of each other than before. Gray occupied 
himself in the galleries taking the notes of 
pictures and statuary afterwards published by 
Mitford, and in forming a collection of MS. 
music: Walpole, on the other hand, had slightly 
cooled in his eagerness for the antique, which 
now "pleases him calmly." "I recollect" — he 
says, " the joy I used to propose if I could but 
once see the Great Duke's gallery ; I walk into 
it now with as little emotion as I should into 
St. Paul's. The statues are a congregation of 
good sort of people, that I have a great deal 
of unruffled regard for." The fact was, no 
doubt, that society had now superior attrac- 
tions. As the son of the English Prime Min- 
ister, and with Mann, who was a relation, at 
his elbow, all doors were open to him. A 
correct record of his time would probably show 
an unvaried succession of suppers, balls, and 
masquerades. In the carnival week, when he 
snatches "a little unmasqued moment" to write 
to West, he says he has done nothing lately 
" but slip out of his domino into bed, and out 



60 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

of bed into his domino. The end of the Car- 
nival is frantic, bacchanalian ; all the morn one 
makes parties in masque to the shops and 
coffee-houses, and all the evening to the operas 
and balls." If Gray was of these junketings, 
his letters do not betray it. He was probably 
engaged in writing uncomplimentary notes on 
the Venus de' Medici, or transcribing a score 
of Pergolesi. 

The first interruption to these diversions came 
in March, when they quitted Florence for Rome 
in order to witness the coronation of the suc- 
cessor of Clement XII, who had died in the 
preceding month. On their road from Siena 
they were passed by a shrill-voiced figure in 
a red cloak with a white handkerchief on its 
head which they took for a fat old woman, but 
which afterwards turned out to be Farinelli's 
rival, Senesino. Rome disappointed them — 
especially in its inhabitants and general desola- 
tion. "I am very glad" — writes Walpole — 
"that I see it while it yet exists"; and he goes 
on to prophesy that before a great number of 
years it will cease to exist. " I am persuaded," 
he says again, " that in a hundred years Rome 
will not be worth seeing ; 'tis less so now than 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 61 

one would believe. All the public pictures are 
decayed or decaying ; the few ruins cannot last 
long, and the statues and private collections 
must be sold from the great poverty of the fami- 
lies." Perhaps this last consideration, coupled 
with the depressing character of Roman hospi- 
tality ("Roman conversations are dreadful 
things " ! — he tells Conway), revived his virtuoso 
tastes. "I am far gone in medals, lamps, idols, 
prints, etc., and all the small commodities to the 
purchase of which I can attain ; I would buy 
the Coliseum if I could." Meanwhile, as the 
cardinals are quarrelling, the coronation is still 
deferred ; and they visit Naples, whence they 
explore Herculaneum, then but recently exposed 
and identified. But neither Gray nor Walpole 
waxes very eloquent upon this theme, probably 
because at this time the excavations were only 
partial, while Pompeii was, of course, as yet 
under ground. Walpole's next letter is written 
from Radicofani — " a vile little town at the foot 
of an old citadel" — which again is at "the top 
of a black barren mountain " — the whole re- 
minding the writer of " Hamilton's Bawn " in 
Swift's verses. In this place, although the 
traditional residence of one of the Three Kings 



62 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

of Cologne, there is but one pen, the property 
of the Governor, who when Walpole borrows 
it, sends it to him under " conduct of a sergeant 
and two Swiss" with special injunctions as to 
its restoration, a precaution which in Walpole's 
view renders it worthy to be ranked with the 
other precious relics of the poor Capuchins of 
the place, concerning which he presently makes 
rather unkindly fun. A few days later they 
were once more in the Casa Ambrosio, Mann's 
pleasant house at Florence, with the river run- 
ning so close to them that they could fish out of 
the windows. " I have a terreno all to myself," — 
says Walpole, — "with an open gallery on the 
Arno where I am now writing to you [i. e., Con- 
way]. Over against me is the famous Gallery ; 
and, on either hand, two fair bridges. Is not 
this charming and cool?" Add to which, on the 
bridges aforesaid, in the serene Italian air, one 
may linger all night in a dressing-gown, eating 
iced fruits to the notes of a guitar. But (what 
was even better than music and moonlight) 
there is the society that was the writer's " fitting 
environment." Lady Pomfret, with her daugh- 
ters, Lady Charlotte, afterwards governess to the 
children of George III, and the beauty Lady 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 63 

Sophia, held a " charming conversation " once 
a week; while the Princess Craon de Beauvau 
has " a constant pharaoh and supper every 
night, where one is quite at one's ease." 
Another lady-resident, scarcely so congenial 
to Walpole, was his sister-in-law, the wife of 
his eldest brother, Robert, who with Lady Pom- 
fret made certain (in Walpole's eyes) wholly 
preposterous pretensions to the yet uninvented 
status of blue-stocking. To Lady Walpole and 
Lady Pomfret was speedily added another "she- 
meteor" in the person of the celebrated Lady 
Mary Wortley Montagu. 

When Lady Mary arrived in Florence in the 
summer of 1 740, she was a woman of more than 
fifty, and was just entering upon that unex- 
plained exile from her country and husband 
which was prolonged for two and twenty years. 
Her brilliant abilities were unimpaired; but it 
is probable that the personal eccentricities which 
had exposed her to the satire of Pope, had not 
decreased with years. That these would be 
extenuated under Walpole's malicious pen was 
not to be expected ; still less, perhaps, that they 
would be treated justly. Although, as already 
intimated, he was not aware of the scandal 



64 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

respecting himself which her descendants were 
to revive, he had ample ground for antipathy. 
Her husband was the bitter foe of Sir Robert 
Walpole ; and she herself had been the firm 
friend and protectress of his mother's rival and 
successor, Miss Skerret.* Accordingly, even 
before her advent, he makes merry over the 
anticipated issue of this portentous " triple 
alliance " of mysticism and nonsense, and later 
he writes to Conway. — "Did I tell you Lady 
Mary Wortley is here? She laughs at my 
Lady Walpole, scolds my Lady Pomfret, and is 
laughed at by the whole town. Her dress, her 
avarice, and her impudence must amaze any one 
that never heard her name. She wears a foul 
mob, that does not cover her greasy black locks, 
that hang loose, never combed or curled ; an old 
mazarine blue wrapper that gapes open and 
discovers a canvass petticoat. ... In three 
words I will give you her picture as we drew it 
in the Sortes Virgiliancz, — Insanam vatem 
aspicies. I give you my honour we did not 
choose it; but Gray, Mr. Coke, Sir Francis 

* Shortly after Lady Walpole's daughter, Horace Walpole's half 

death, Sir Robert Walpole mar- sister, subsequently Lady Mary 

ried his mistress, Maria Skerret, Churchill, 
who died 4 June, 1738, leaving a 



Horace Walpole : A Me?noir. 65 

Dashwood, and I, with several others drew it 
fairly amongst a thousand for different people."* 
In justice to Lady Mary it is only fair to say 
that she seems to have been quite unconscious 
that she was an object of ridicule, and was per- 
fectly satisfied with her reception at Florence. 
"Lord and Lady Pomfret" — she tells Mr. 
Wortley — " take pains to make the place agree- 
able to me, and I have been visited by the 
greatest part of the people of quality."! But 
although Walpole's portrait is obviously splen- 
etic (some of its details are suppressed in the 
above quotation), it is plain that even moderate 
spectators could not deny her peculiarities. 
"Lady Mary" — said Spence — "is one of the 
most shining characters in the world, but shines 
like a comet; she is all irregularity, and always 
wandering; the most wise, the most imprudent; 
loveliest, most disagreeable ; best-natured, crud- 
est woman in the world : 'all things by turns but 
nothing long.'" % 

By this time the new pope, Benedict XIV, had 
been elected. But although the friends were 
within four days' journey of Rome, the fear of 

* Walpole to Conway, 25 September, 1 740. 

t Letters, etc., of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ii, 325. 

\ Spence's Anecdotes, by Singer, 2nd edn., 1858, p. xxiii. 



66 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

heat and malaria forced them to forego the 
spectacle of the coronation. They continued to 
reside with Mann at Florence until May in the 
following year. Upon Gray the "violent de- 
lights " of the Tuscan capital had already begun 
to pall. It is — he says — "an excellent place 
to employ all one's animal sensations in, but 
utterly contrary to one's rational powers." 
Walpole, on the other hand, is in his element. 
" I am so well within and without," he says in 
the same letter which sketches Lady Mary, 
" that you would scarce know me : I am younger 
than ever, think of nothing but diverting my- 
self, and live in a round of pleasures. We have 
operas, concerts, and balls, mornings and even- 
ings. I dare not tell you all of one's idlenesses, 
you would look so grave and senatorial, at 
hearing that one rises at eleven in the morning, 
goes to the opera at nine at night, to supper at 
one, and to bed at three ! But literally here the 
evenings and nights are so charming and so 
warm, one can't avoid 'em." In a later letter 
he says he has lost all curiosity and "except the 
towns in the straight road to Great Britain, 
shall scarce see a jot more of a foreign land." 
Save and except a sally about the humours of 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 67 

"Moll Worthless" (Lady Mary) and Lady 
Walpole, and the record of the purchase of a 
few pictures, medals, and busts — one of the last 
of which, a Vespasian in basalt, was subsequently 
among the glories of the Twickenham Gallery 
— his remaining letters from Florence contain 
little of interest. Early in 174.1, the homeward 
journey was mapped out. They were to go to 
Bologna to hear the Viscontina sing ; they were 
to visit the Fair at Reggio, and so by Venice 
homewards. 

But whether the Viscontina was in voice or 
not, there is, as far as our travellers are con- 
cerned, absence of evidence. No farther letter 
of Gray from Florence has been preserved, nor 
is there any mention of him in Walpole's next 
despatch to West from Reggio. At that place 
a misunderstanding seems to have arisen, and 
they parted, Gray going forward to Venice with 
two other travelling companions, Mr. John 
Chute and Mr. Whitehed. In the rather barren 
record of Walpole's story, this misunderstand- 
ing naturally assumes an exaggerated impor- 
tance. But it was really a very trifling and a very 
intelligible affair. They had been too long to- 
gether ; and the first fascination of travel, which 



6 8 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

formed at the outset so close a bond, had gradu- 
ally faded with time. As this alteration took 
place, their natural dispositions began to assert 
themselves, and Walpole's normal love of plea- 
sure and Gray's retired studiousness became 
more and more apparent. It is probable too, 
that, in all the Florentine gaieties, Gray, who 
was not a great man's son, fell a little into the 
background. At all events the separation was 
imminent, and it needed but a nothing — the 
alleged opening by Walpole of a letter to Gray 
— to bring it about. Whatever the proximate 
cause, both were silent on the subject, although, 
years after the quarrel had been made up, and 
Gray was dead, Walpole took the entire blame 
upon himself. When Mason was preparing 
Gray's Memoirs in 1773, he authorised him to 
insert a note by which, in general terms, he ad- 
mitted himself to have been in fault, assigning 
as his reason for not being more explicit, that 
while he was living it would not be pleasant to 
read his private quarrels discussed in magazines 
and newspapers. But to Mason personally he 
was at the same time thoroughly candid, as well 
as considerate to his departed friend: — "I am 
conscious," he says, "that in the beginning of the 



Horace Walpole • A Memoir. 69 

differences between Gray and me, the fault was 
mine. I was too young, too fond of my own 
diversions, nay, I do not doubt, too much intoxi- 
cated by indulgence, vanity, and the insolence 
of my situation, as a Prime Minister's son, not 
to have been inattentive and insensible to the 
feelings of one I thought below me ; of one, I 
blush to say it, that I knew was obliged to me ; 
of one whom presumption and folly perhaps made 
me deem not my superior then in parts, though 
I have since felt my infinite inferiority to him. 
I treated him insolently : he loved me and I did 
not think he did. I reproached him with the 
difference between us when he acted from con- 
viction of knowing he was my superior; I often 
disregarded his wishes of seeing places, which 
I would not quit other amusements to visit, 
though I offered to send him to them without 
me. Forgive me, if I say that his temper was 
not conciliating. At the same time that I will 
confess to you that he acted a more friendly 
part, had I had the sense to take advantage of 
it ; he freely told me of my faults. I declared 
I did not desire to hear them, nor would correct 
them. You will not wonder that with the dig- 
nity of his spirit, and the obstinate carelessness 



Jo Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

of mine, the breach must have grown wider till 
we became incompatible."* 

" Sir, you have said more than was neces- 
sary" — was Johnson's reply to a conciliatory 
speech from Topham Beauclerk. It is needless 
to comment further upon this incident, except 
to say that Walpole's generous words show that 
the disagreement was rather the outcome of a 
sequence of long-strained circumstances than 
the result of momentary petulance. For a time 
reconciliation was deferred, but in the year 
1 744 it was effected by a lady, and the intimacy 
thus renewed continued for the remainder of 
Gray's life. 

Shortly after Gray's departure in May, Wal- 
pole fell ill of a quinsy. He did not, at first, rec- 
ognise the gravity of his ailment, and doctored 
himself. By a fortunate chance, Joseph Spence, 
then travelling as governor to the Earl of Lin- 
coln, was in the neighbourhood, and responding 



* Walpole to Mason, 2 March, panion. I had just broke loose 

1773. The letters to Mason were from the restraints of the univer- 

first printed in 1851 by Mitford. sity.with as much money as I could 

But Pinkerton, in the Walpoliana, spend, and I was willing to indulge 

i, 95, had reported much the same myself. Gray was for antiquities, 

thing. "The quarrel between &c, while I was for perpetual 

Gray and me [Walpole] arose balls and plays. The fault was 

from his being too serious a com- mine." 



Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 71 

to a message from Walpole, "found him scarce 
able to speak." Spence immediately sent for 
medical aid, and summoned from Florence one 
Antonio Cocchi, a physician and author of some 
eminence. Under Cocchi's advice, Walpole 
speedily showed signs of improvement, though, 
in his own words in the Short Notes, he 
" was given over for five hours, escaping with 
great difficulty." The sequel may be told from 
the same source. " I went to Venice with 
Henry Clinton, Earl of Lincoln, and Mr. Joseph 
Spence, Professor of Poetry, and after a month's 
stay there, returned with them by sea from 
Genoa, landing at Antibes, and by the way of 
Toulon, Marseilles, Aix, and through Langue- 
doc to Montpellier, Toulouse, and Orleans, 
arrived at Paris, where I left the Earl and Mr. 
Spence, and landed at Dover, September 12th, 
1 741, O. S., having been chosen Member of 
Parliament for Kellington [Callington], in Corn- 
wall, at the preceding General Election [of 
June], which Parliament put a period to my 
father's administration, which had continued 
above twenty years." 



CHAPTER III. 

Gains of the Grand Tour ; "Epistle to Ashton" j resignation 
of Sir Robert Walpole, who becomes Earl of Orford ; collapse 
of the Secret Committee ; life at Houghton ; the picture gal- 
lery ; "A Sermon on Pai filing" ; Lord Orford as Moses; 
the "^Edes Walpoliana "y Priot's " Protogenes and Apelles "; 
minor literature y Lord Orford's decline and death j his pane- 
gyric ; Horace Walpole 's means. 




III. 



ALTHOUGH, during his residence in Italy, 
- Walpole had neglected to accumulate the 
store of erudition which his friend Gray had 
been so industriously hiving for home consump- 
tion, he can scarcely be said to have learned 
nothing, especially at an age when much is 
learned unconsciously. His epistolary style, 
which, with its peculiar graces and pseudo- 
graces, had been already formed before he left 
England, had now acquired a fresh vivacity 

75 



J 6 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

from his increased familiarity with the French 
and Italian languages ; and he had carried on, 
however discursively, something more than a 
mere flirtation with antiquities. Dr. Conyers 
Middleton, whose once famous Life of Cicero 
was published early in 1741, and who was him- 
self an antiquary of distinction, thought highly 
of Walpole's attainments in this way,* and in- 
deed more than one passage in a poem written 
by Walpole to Ashton at this time could scarcely 
have been penned by any one not fairly familiar 
with (for example) the science of those " medals" 
upon which Mr. Addison had discoursed so 
learnedly after his Italian tour : — 

" What scanty precepts ! Studies how confined ! 
Too mean to fill your comprehensive mind; 
Unsatisfy'd with knowing when or where 
Some Roman bigot rais'd a fane to Fear ; 
On what green medal Virtue stands express'd, 
How Concord's pictur'd, Liberty how dress'd ; 
Or with wise ken judiciously define, 
When Pius marks the honorary coin 
Of Caracalla, or of Antonine." t 

* " Juvenis, non tam generis quid ad argumenti rnei rationem, 

nobilitate, ac paterni hominis glo- aut libelli ornamentum pertineret, 

ria, quam ingenii, doctrina, et vir- pro arbitrio meo utendum obtulit. " 

tute propria illustris. Ille vero Pre/, ad Germana qucedam An- 

haudcitius fere in patriam reversus tiq. Monumenta, &c., p. 6 (Quoted 

est, quam de studiis meis, ut con- in Mitford's Corr: of Walpole and 

suerat, familiariter per literas quae- Mason, 1851, i, x-xi). 

rens, mihi ultro de copia sua, quic- t Walpole's Works, 1798, i, 6. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. yj 

The poem from which these lines are taken 
— An Epistle from Florence to Thomas A shton, 
Esq ; Tutor to the Earl of Plymouth — extends 
to some four hundred lines, and exhibits another 
side of Walpole's activity in Italy. " You have 
seen " — says Gray to West in July, 1 740 — "an 
Epistle to Mr. Ashton, that seems to me full of 
spirit and thought, and a good deal of poetic 
fire." Writing to him ten years later, Gray 
seems still to have retained his first impression. 
" Satire" — he says — "will be heard, for all the 
audience are by nature her friends ; especially 
when she appears in the spirit of Dryden, with 
his strength, and often with his versification, 
such as you have caught in those lines on the 
Royal Unction, on the Papal Dominion, and 
Convents of both Sexes; on Henry VIII and 
Charles II, for these are to me the shining 
parts of your Epistle. There are many lines I 
could wish corrected, and some blotted out, but 
beauties enough to atone for a thousand worse 
faults than these."* Walpole has never been 
ranked among the poets ; but Gray's praise, in 
which Middleton and others concurred, justifies 
a further quotation. This is the passage on the 
Royal Unction and the Papal Dominion : — 

* Gray's Works by Gosse, 1884, ii, 221. 



J 8 Horace Waplole : A Memoir. 

" When at the altar a new monarch kneels 
What conjur'd awe upon the people steals ! 
The chosen He adores the precious oil, 
Meekly receives the solemn charm, and while 
The priest some blessed nothings mutters o'er, 
Sucks in the sacred grease at every pore : 
He seems at once to shed his mortal skin, 
And feels divinity transfus'd within. 
The trembling vulgar dread the royal nod, 
And worship God's anointed more than God. 

" Such sanction gives the prelate to such kings ! 
So mischief from those hallow'd fountains springs. 
But bend your eye to yonder harass'd plains, 
Where king and priest in one united reigns; 
See fair Italia mourn her holy state, 
And droop oppress'd beneath a papal weight : 
Where fat celibacy usurps the soil, 
And sacred sloth consumes the peasant's toil : 
The holy drones monopolise the sky, 
And plunder by a vow of poverty. 
The Christian cause their lewd profession taints, 
Unlearn'd, unchaste, uncharitable saints." * 

That the refined and fastidious Horace Wal- 
pole of later years should have begun as a pass- 
able imitator of Dryden is sufficiently piquant. 
But that the son of the great courtier Prime 
Minister should have distinguished himself by 
the vigour of his denunciations of kings and 
priests, especially when, as his biographers 
have not failed to remark, he was writing to 

* Walpole's Works, 1798, i, 8-9. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 79 

one about to take orders, is more noticeable 
still. The poem was reprinted in his works, 
but he makes no mention of it in the Short 
Notes, nor of an Inscription for the Neglected 
Column in the Place of St. Mark at Florence, 
written at the same time and characterised by 
the same anti-monarchical spirit. 

His letters to Mann, his chief correspondent 
at this date, are greatly occupied, during the 
next few months, with the climax of the catas- 
trophe recorded at the end of the preceding 
chapter — the resignation of Sir Robert Wal- 
pole. The first of the long series was written 
on his way home in September, 1741, when he 
had for fellow-passengers the Viscontina, Amo- 
revoli, and other Italian singers, then engaged 
in invading England. He appears to have at 
once taken up his residence with his father in 
Downing Street. Into the network of circum- 
stances which had conspired to array against 
the great peace Minister the formidable opposi- 
tion of disaffected Whigs, Jacobites, Tories, and 
adherents of the Prince of Wales, it would here 
be impossible to enter. But there were already 
signs that Sir Robert was nodding to his fall ; 
and that although the old courage was as high 



80 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

as ever, the old buoyancy was beginning to flag. 
Failing health added its weight to the scale. 
In October Walpole tells his correspondent 
that he had "been very near sealing his letter 
with black wax," for his father had been in dan- 
ger of his life, but was recovering, though he 
is no longer the Sir Robert that Mann once 
knew. He who once would snore before they 
had drawn his curtains, now never slept above 
an hour without waking ; and " he who at dinner 
always forgot that he was Minister," now sat 
silent with eyes fixed for an hour together. At 
the opening of Parliament, however, there was 
an ostensible majority of forty for the Court, and 
Walpole seems to have regarded this as encour- 
aging. But one of the first motions was for an 
enquiry into the state of the nation, and this 
was followed by a division upon a Cornish peti- 
tion which reduced the majority to seven, — a 
variation which sets the writer nervously jest- 
ing about apartments in the Tower. Seven 
days later the opposition obtained a majority 
of four, and although Sir Robert, still sanguine 
in the remembrance of past successes, seemed 
less anxious than his family, matters were grow- 
ing grave, and his youngest son was reconciling 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 81 

himself to the coming blow. It came practi- 
cally on the 2 1 st January, 1742, when Pulteney 
moved for a secret committee, which (in reality) 
was to be a committee of accusation against the 
Prime Minister. Walpole defeated this manoeu- 
vre with his characteristic courage and address, 
but only by a narrow majority of three. So 
inconsiderable a victory upon so crucial a ques- 
tion was perilously close to a reverse, and when 
in the succeeding case of the disputed Chippen- 
ham Election, the Government were defeated 
by one, he yielded to the counsels of his advi- 
sers, and decided to resign. He was thereupon 
raised to the peerage as Earl of Orford, with a 
pension of ,£4000 a year,* while his daughter 
by his second wife, Miss Skerret, was created 
an Earl's daughter in her own right. His fall 
was mourned by no one more sincerely than by 
the master he had served so staunchly for so 
long; and when he went to kiss hands at St. 
James's upon taking leave, the old King fell 
upon his neck, kissed him, and broke into tears. 
The new Earl himself seems to have taken 
his reverses with his customary equanimity, and, 

* He gave this up at first, but involved, reclaimed it (Cunning- 
afterwards, when his affairs became ham's Corr. i, 126 n.). 



82 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

like the shrewd " old Parliamentary hand " that 
he was, to have at once devoted himself to the 
difficult task of breaking the force of the attack 
which he foresaw would be made upon himself 
by those in power. He contrived adroitly to 
foster dissension and disunion among the het- 
erogeneous body of his opponents ; he secured 
that the new Ministry should be mainly com- 
posed of his old party, the Whigs ; and he man- 
aged to discredit his most formidable adversary, 
Pulteney. One of the first results of these pre- 
cautionary measures was that a motion by Lord 
Limerick for a committee to examine into the 
conduct of the last twenty years was thrown 
out by a small majority. A fortnight later the 
motion was renewed in a fresh form, the scope 
of the examination being limited to the last ten 
years. Upon this occasion Horace Walpole 
made his maiden speech, a graceful and modest, 
if not very forcible, effort on his father's side. 
In this instance, however, the Government were 
successful, and the Committee was appointed. 
Yet despite the efforts to excite the public mind 
respecting Lord Orford, the case against him 
seems to have faded away in the hands of his ac- 
cusers. The first report of the Committee, issued 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 83 

in May, contained nothing to criminate the per- 
son against whom the enquiry had been directly 
levelled ; and despite the strenuous and even 
shameless efforts of the Government to obtain 
evidence inculpating the late Minister, the Com- 
mittee were obliged to issue a second report in 
June of which — so far as the chief object was 
concerned — the gross result was nil. By the 
middle of July, Walpole was able to tell Mann 
that the "long session was over, and the Secret 
Committee already forgotten" — as much for- 
gotten, he says in a later letter, "as if it had 
happened in the last reign." 

When Sir Robert Walpole had resigned, he 
had quitted his official residence in Downing 
Street (which ever since he first occupied it 
in 1735 has been the official residence of the 
First Lord of the Treasury), and moved to No. 
5 Arlington Street, opposite to, but smaller 
than, the No. 17 in which his youngest son 
had been born, and upon the site of which 
William Kent built a larger house for 
Mr. Pelham. No. 5 is now distinguished by 
a tablet erected by the Society of Arts pro- 
claiming it to have been the house of the 
ex- Minister. From Arlington Street, or from 



84 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

the other home at Chelsea already mentioned, 
most of Walpole's letters were dated during 
the months which succeeded the crisis. But 
in August, when the House had risen, he mi- 
grated with the rest of the family to Hough- 
ton — the great mansion in Norfolk which had 
now taken the place of the ancient seat of the 
Walpoles, where during the summer months, his 
father had been accustomed in his free-handed 
manner to keep open house to all the county. 
Fond of hospitality, fond of field-sports, fond of 
gardening and all out-door occupations, Lord 
Orford was at home among the flat expanses 
and Norfolk turnips. But the family seat had 
no such attractions to his son, fresh from the 
multi-coloured continental life, and still bearing 
about him, in a certain frailty of physique and 
enervation of spirit, the tokens of a sickly 
childhood. "Next post" — he says despairingly 
to Mann — " I shall not be able to write to you ; 
and when I am there [at Houghton], shall 
scarce find materials to furnish a letter above 
every other post. I beg, however, that you 
will write constantly to me ; it will be my only 
entertainment; for I neither hunt, brew, drink 
nor reap." "Consider" — he says again — "I 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 85 

am in the barren land of Norfolk, where news 
grows as slow as anything green ; and besides, 
I am in the house of a fallen minister ! " Writ- 
ing letters (in company with the little white 
dog "Patapan" which he had brought from 
Florence as a successor to the defunct Tory), 
walking, and playing comet with his sister 
Lady Mary or any chance visitors to the 
house, seem to have been his chief resources. 
A year later he pays a second visit to Hough- 
ton, and he is still unreconciled to his environ- 
ment. "Only imagine that I here everyday 
see men, who are mountains of roast beef, and 
only just seem roughly hewn into the outlines 
of human form, like the giant-rock at Pratolino! 
I shudder when I see them brandish their 
knives in act to carve, and look on them as 
savages that devour one another." Then there 
are the enforced civilities to entirely uninterest- 
ing people — the intolerable female relative, who 
is curious about her cousins to the fortieth re- 
move. " I have an Aunt here, a family piece of 
goods, an old remnant of inquisitive hospitality 
and economy, who, to all intents and purposes, 
is as beefy as her neighbours. She wore me 
so down yesterday with interrogatories, that I 



86 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

dreamt all night she was at my ear with 
' who's' and ' why's' and ' when's' and ' where's,' 
till at last in my very sleep I cried out 'for 
heaven's sake, madam, ask me no more ques- 
tions.' " And then, in his impatience of bores 
in general, he goes on to write a little essay 
upon that " growth of English root," that 
"awful yawn, which sleep cannot abate," as 
Byron calls it, — Ennui. " I am so far from 
growing used to mankind (he means "uncon- 
genial mankind") by living amongst them, that 
my natural ferocity and wildness does but every 
day grow worse. They tire me, they fatigue 
me ; I don't know what to do with them ; I 
don't know what to say to them; I fling open 
the windows, and fancy I want air ; and when 
I get by myself, I undress myself, and seem to 
have had people in my pockets, in my plaits, 
and on my shoulders ! I indeed find this fatigue 
worse in the country than in town, because 
one can avoid it there, and has more resources, 
but it is there too. I fear 'tis growing old, but 
I literally seem to have murdered a man whose 
name was Ennui, for his ghost is ever before 
me. They say there is no English word for 
ennui; I think you may translate it most 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 87 

literally by what is called 'entertaining peo- 
ple ' and ' doing the honours ' ; that is, you sit 
an hour with some one you don't know and 
don't care for, talk about the wind and the 
weather, and ask a thousand foolish questions, 
which all begin with, ' I think you live a great 
deal in the country,' or ' I think you don't love 
this thing or that' Oh ! 'tis dreadful ! "* 

But even Houghton, with its endless "doing 
the honours," must have had its compensations. 
There was a library, and — what must have had 
even stronger attractions for Horace Walpole 
— that magnificent and almost unique collection 
of pictures which under a later member of the 
family, the third Earl of Orford, passed to 
Catherine of Russia. For years Lord Orford, 
with unwearied diligence and exceptional op- 
portunities, had been accumulating these trea- 
sures. Mann in Florence, Vertue in England, 
and a host of industrious foragers had helped 

* Walpole to Chute, 20 August, he lived principally abroad. His 
1743. Mr. John Chute was a friend portrait by Miintz after Pompsio 
whom Walpole had made at Flor- Battoni hung over the door in 
ence, and with whom, as already Walpole's Bedchamber at Straw- 
stated in Chapter ii, Gray had berry Hill. An interesting His- 
travelled when they parted com- lory of the Vyne was published 
pany. Until, by the death of a in 1888 by Mr. Chaloner W. 
brother, he succeeded to the estate Chute, its present possessor, 
called The Vyne in Hampshire, 



88 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

to bring together the priceless canvasses which 
crowded the rooms of the Minister's house next 
the Treasury at Whitehall. And if he was in- 
experienced as a critic, he was far too acute a 
man to be deceived by the shiploads of " Holy 
Families, Madonnas, and other dismal dark sub- 
jects, neither entertaining nor ornamental," 
against which the one great native artist of his 
time, the painter of the " Rake's Progress," so 
persistently inveighed. There was no doubt 
about the pedigrees of the Wouvermanns and 
Teniers, the Guidos and Rubens, the Vandykes 
and Murillos, which decorated the rooms at 
Downing Street and Chelsea and Richmond. 
From the few records which remain of prices, 
it would seem that, in addition to the merit of 
authenticity, many of the pictures must have 
had the attraction of being "bargains." In 
days when ^4000 or ^5000 is no extravagant 
price to be given for an old master, it is instruc- 
tive to read that £750 was the largest sum ever 
given by Lord Orford for any one picture, and 
Walpole himself quotes this amount as ^630. 
For four great Snyders, which Vertue bought 
for him, he only paid ^428, and for a portrait 
of Clement IX by Carlo Maratti no more than 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 89 

^200. Many of the other pictures in his gallery 
cost him still less, being donations — no doubt 
sometimes in gratitude for favours to come — 
from his friends and adherents. The Earl of 
Pembroke, Lord Waldegrave, the Duke of 
Montagu, Lord .Tyrawley, were among these. 
But upon the whole, the collection was gathered 
mainly from galleries like the Zambecari at 
Bologna, the Arnaldi Palace at Florence, the 
Pallavicini at Rome, and from the stores of 
noble collectors in England. 

In 1 743, the majority of these had apparently 
been concentrated at Houghton, where there 
was special accommodation for them. "My 
Lord," says Horace, groaning over a fresh visit 
to Norfolk, "has pressed me so much that I 
could not with decency refuse : he is going to 
furnish and hang his picture-gallery, and wants 
me." But it is impossible to believe that he 
really objected to a duty so congenial to his 
tastes. In fact, he was really greatly interested 
in it. His letters contain frequent references to 
a new Domenichino, a Virgin and Child, which 
Mann is sending from Florence, and he comes 
up to London to meet this and other pictures, 
and is not seriously inconsolable to find that 

7 



s. 



oo Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

owing to the quarantine for the plague on the 
continent, he is detained for some days in town. 
One of the best evidences of his solicitude in 
connection with the arrangements of the Hough- 
ton collection is, however, the discourse which he 
wrote in the summer of 1742 under the title of 
a Sermon on Painting, and which he himself 
tells us was actually preached by the Earl's 
chaplain in the gallery, and afterwards re- 
peated at Stanno, his elder brother's house. 
The text was taken from Psalm CXV — "They 
have mouths, but they speak not: eyes have 
they, but they see not: neither is there any 
breath in their nostrils," and the writer, illus- 
trating his theme by reference to the pictures 
around his audience in the gallery, or dispersed 
through the building, manages to eulogize the 
painter's art with considerable skill. He 
touches upon the pernicious effect which the 
closely realised representation of popish miracles 
must have upon the illiterate spectator, and 
points out how much more commendable and 
serviceable is the portraiture of benignity, piety, 
and chastity — how much more instructive the 
incidents of the Passion, where every "touch of 
the pencil is a lesson of contrition, each figure 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 91 

an apostle to call you to repentance." He lays 
stress, as Lessing and other writers have done, 
on the universal language of the brush, and 
indicates its abuse when restricted to the repro- 
duction of inquisitors, visionaries, imaginary 
hermits, "consecrated gluttons," or "noted con- 
cubines," after which (as becomes his father's 
son) he does not fail to disclose its more fitting 
vocation, to perpetuate the likeness of William 
the Deliverer, and the benign, the honest House 
of Hanover. The Dives and Lazarus of Vero- 
nese and the Prodigal Son of Salvator Rosa, 
both on the walls, are pressed into his service, 
and the famous Us?crers of Quentin Matsys 
also prompt their parable. Then, after adroitly 
dwelling upon the pictorial honours lavished 
upon mere asceticism to the prejudice of real 
heroes, taking Poussin's picture of Moses 
Striking the Rock for his text, he winds into 
what was probably the ultimate purpose of his 
discourse, a neatly veiled panegyric of Sir 
Robert Walpole under guise of the great law- 
giver of the Israelites, which may be cited as 
a favourable sample of this curious oration : — 
"But it is not necessary to dive into profane 
history for examples of unregarded the merit : 



92 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

Scriptures themselves contain instances of the 
greatest patriots, who lie neglected, while new- 
fashioned bigots or noisy incendiaries are the 
reigning objects of public veneration. See the 
great Moses himself ! the lawgiver, the defender, 
the preserver of Israel ! Peevish orators are 
more run after, and artful Jesuits more popular. 
Examine but the life of that slighted patriot, 
how boldly in his youth he understood the 
cause of liberty ! Unknown, without interest, 
he stood against the face of Pharaoh ! He 
saved his countrymen from the hand of Tyranny, 
and from the dominion of an idolatrous king: 
how patiently did he bear, for a series of years, 
the clamours and cabals of a factious people, 
wandering after strange lusts, and exasperated 
by ambitious ringleaders ! How oft did he 
intercede for their pardon, when injured him- 
self ! How tenderly deny them specious favours, 
which he knew must turn to their own destruc- 
tion ! See him lead them through opposition, 
through plots, through enemies, to the enjoy- 
ment of peace, and to the possession of a land 
flowing with milk and honey! Or with more 
surprise see him in the barren desert, where 
sands and wilds overspread the dreary scene, 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 93 

where no hopes of moisture, no prospect of 
undiscovered springs could flatter their parch- 
ing thirst, see how with a miraculous hand 

' He struck the rock, and straight the waters flow'd.' 

Whoever denies his praises to such evidences 
of merit, or with jealous look can scowl on such 
benefits, is like the senseless idol, that has a 
mouth that speaks not, and eyes that cannot see." 
If, in accordance with some perverse fashion 
of the day, the foregoing production had not been 
disguised as a sermon, and actually preached 
with the orthodox accompaniment of bands and 
doxology, there is no reason why it should not 
have been regarded as a harmless and not 
unaccomplished essay on Art. But the objec- 
tionable spirit of parody upon the ritual engen- 
dered by the strife between " High" and " Low" 
(Walpole himself wrote some Lessons for the 
Day, 1 742, which are to be found in the works 
of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams) seems to 
have dictated the title of what in other respects 
is a serious Spectator, and needed no spice 
of irreverence to render it palatable. The Ser- 
mon had, however, one valuable result, namely, 
that it suggested to its author the expediency 

7* 



94 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

of preparing some record of the pictorial riches 
of Houghton upon the model of the famous 
Aides Barberini and Giustiniance. As the 
dedication of the Aides Walpoliantz is dated 
24 August, 1743, it must have been written 
before that date, but it was not actually pub- 
lished until 1747, and then only to give away. 
Another enlarged and more accurate edition 
was issued in 1752, and it was finally reprinted 
in the second volume of the Works of 1798, 
pp. 221-78, where it is followed by the Sermon 
on Painting. Professing to be more a catalogue 
of the pictures than a description of them, it 
nevertheless gives a good idea of a collection 
which (as its historian says) both in its extent 
and the condition of its treasures excelled most 
of the existing collections of Italy. In an 
" Introduction," the characteristics of the various 
artists are distinguished with much discrimina- 
tion, although it is naturally more sympathetic 
than critical. Perhaps one of its happiest pages 
is the following excursus upon a poem of 
Prior : — " I cannot conclude this topic of the 
ancient painters without taking notice of an 
extreme pretty instance of Prior's taste, and 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 95 

which may make an example on that frequent 
subject the resemblance between poetry and 
painting, and prove that taste in the one will 
influence in the other. Everybody has read his 
tale of Protogenes and Apelles. If they have 
read the story in Pliny they will recollect, that 
by the latter s account it seemed to have been 
a trial between two Dutch performers. The 
Roman author tells you, that when Apelles was 
to write his name on a board, to let Protogenes 
know who had been to enquire for him, he drew 
an exactly straight and slender line. Proto- 
genes returned, and with his pencil, and another 
colour, divided his competitor's. Apelles, on 
seeing the ingenious minuteness of the Rhodian 
master, took a third colour, and laid on a still 
finer and indivisible line. But the English 
poet, who could distinguish the emulation of 
genius from nice experiments about splitting 
hairs, took the story into his own hands, and 
in a less number of trials, and with bolder 
execution, comprehended the whole force oi 
painting, and flung drawing, colouring, and the 
doctrine of light and shade into the noble con- 
tention of those two absolute masters. In Prior, 



96 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

the first wrote his name in a perfect design, 

and 

' with one judicious stroke 

On the plain ground Apelles drew 
A circle regularly true.' 

Protogenes knew the hand, and showed Apelles 
that his own knowledge of colouring was as 
great as the other's skill in drawing. 

' Upon the happy line he laid 
Such obvious light and easy shade, 
That Paris' apple stood confest, 
Or Leda's egg, or Chloe's breast.' * 

Apelles acknowledged his rival's merit, with- 
out jealousy persisting to refine on the masterly 
reply : 

' Pugnavere pares, succubuere pares.' " t 

Among the other efforts of his pen at this 
time were some squibs in ridicule of the new 
Ministry. One was a parody of a scene in 
Macbeth; the other of a scene in Corneille's 
Cinna. He also wrote a paper against Lord 
Bath in the Old England Journal. 

* " Mr. Vertue the engraver within his ; but that still not being 

made a very ingenious conjecture perfect, Apelles drew a smaller and 

on this story : he supposes that exactly proportioned one within 

Apelles did not draw a straight both the former." (Walpole'snote.) 

line, but the outline of a human fig- t Walpole's Works, 1798, ii, 

ure, which not being correct, Pro- 229-30. The final quotation is 

togenes drew a more correct figure from Martial. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 97 

In the not very perplexed web of Horace 
Walpole's life, the next occurrence of impor- 
tance is his father's death. When, as Sir Robert 
Walpole, he had ceased to be Prime Minister 
he was sixty-five years of age, and though his 
equanimity and wonderful constitution still 
seemed to befriend him, he had personally little 
desire, even if the ways had been open, to re- 
cover his ancient power. "I believe nothing 
could prevail on him to return to the Treasury " 
— writes his son to Mann in 1743. "He says 
he will keep the 12th of February, — the day 
he resigned, — with his family as long as he 
lives." He continued, nevertheless, to assist 
his old master with his counsel, and more than 
one step of importance by which the King 
startled his new Ministry owed its origin to a 
confidential consultation with Lord Orford. 
When, in January, 1744, the old question of 
discontinuing the Hanoverian troops was re- 
vived with more than ordinary insistence, it was 
through Lord Orford's timely exertions, and his 
personal credit with his friends, that the motion 
was defeated by an overwhelming majority. On 
the other hand, a further attempt to harass him 
by another Committee of Secret Enquiry was 



98 Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 

wholly unsuccessful, and signs were not want- 
ing that his old prestige had by no means de- 
parted. Towards the close of 1 744, however, his 
son begins to chronicle a definite decline in his 
health. He is evidently suffering seriously from 
stone, and is forbidden to take the least exercise 
by the King's serjeant-surgeon, that famous Mr. 
Ranby who was the friend of Hogarth and 
Fielding. In January of the next year, he is 
trying a famous specific for his complaint, Mrs. 
Stephens's medicine. Six weeks later, he has 
been alarmingly ill for about a month ; and al- 
though reckoned out of absolute danger, is 
hardly ever conscious more than four hours 
out of the four-and-twenty, from the powerful 
opiates he takes in order to deaden pain. A 
month later, on the 18th March, 1745, he died 
at Arlington Street in his sixty-ninth year. At 
first his son dares scarcely speak of his loss, but 
a fortnight afterwards he writes more fully. After 
showing that the state of his circumstances 
proved how little truth there had been in the 
charges of self-enrichment made against him, 
Walpole goes on to say: — "It is certain, he is 
dead very poor : his debts, with his legacies, 
which are trifling, amount to fifty thousand 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 99 

pounds. His estate, a nominal eight thousand 
a year, much mortgaged. In short his fond- 
ness for Houghton has endangered Houghton. 
If he had not so overdone it, he might have left 
such an estate to his family as might have 
secured the glory of the place for many years : 
another such debt must expose it to sale. If 
he had lived his unbounded generosity and con- 
tempt of money would have run him into vast 
difficulties. However irreparable his personal 
loss may be to his friends, he certainly did criti- 
cally well for himself: he had lived to stand the 
rudest trials with honour, to see his character 
universally cleared, his enemies brought to in- 
famy for their ignorance or villany, and the 
world allowing him to be the only man in Eng- 
land fit to be what he had been, and he died at 
a time when his age and infirmities prevented 
his again undertaking the support of a govern- 
ment, which engrossed his whole care, and 
which he foresaw was falling into the last con- 
fusion. In this I hope his judgment failed! 
His fortune attended him to the last, for he died 
of the most painful of all distempers, with little 
or no pain." * 

* Walpole to Mann, 15 April, 1745. 



ioo Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

From the Short Notes we learn further: — 
" He [my father] left me the house in Arling- 
ton-street in which he died, ^5000 in money, 
and ^"iooo a year from the Collector's place in 
the Custom-house, and the surplus to be divided 
between my brother Edward and me." 




CHAPTER IV. 

Stage-gossip and small-talk; Ranelagh Gardens j Fontenoy 
and Leicester House j echoes of the '^j ; Preston Pans ; Cul- 
loden j trial of the Rebel Lords ; deaths of Kilmarnock and 
Bahnerino ; epilogtie to ' ' Tamerlane " ; Walpole and his rela- 
tions ; Lady Orford ; literary efforts ; The Beauties j takes 
a house at Windsor. 




IV. 



DURING the period between Walpole's 
return to England and the death of Lord 
Orford, his letters, addressed almost exclusively 
to Mann, are largely occupied with the occur- 
rences which accompanied and succeeded his 
father's downfall. To Lord Orford's protege 
and relative these particulars were naturally 
of the first importance, and Walpole's function 
of "General Intelligencer" fell proportionately 
into the background. Still there are occasional 

8 105 



106 Ho7'ace Walpole: A Memoir. 

references to current events of a merely social 
character. After the secret Committee, he is 
interested (probably because his friend Conway 
was pecuniarily interested) in the Opera, and 
the reception by the British public of the Vis- 
contina, Amorevoli, arid the other Italian singers 
whom he had known abroad. Of the stage he 
says comparatively little, dismissing poor Mrs. 
Woffington, who had then just made her ap- 
pearance at Covent Garden, as "a bad actress" 
who nevertheless "has life" — an opinion in 
which he is supported by Conway, who calls her 
" an impudent Irish-faced girl." In the acting 
of Garrick, after whom all the town is (as Gray 
says) " horn-mad" in May, 1 742, he sees nothing 
wonderful, although he admits that it is heresy 
to say so, since that infallible stage critic, the 
Duke of Argyll, has declared him superior to 
Betterton. But he praises " a little simple 
farce" at Drury Lane, Miss Lucy in Town, by 
Henry Fielding, in which his future friend, Mrs. 
Clive, and Beard mimic Amorevoli and the 
Muscovita. The same letter contains a refer- 
ence to another famous stage-queen, now near- 
ing eighty, Anne Bracegirdle, who should have 
had the money that Congreve left to Henrietta, 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 107 

Duchess of Marlborough. "Tell Mr. Chute 
(he says) that his friend Bracegirdle breakfasted 
with me this morning. As she went out, and 
wanted her clogs, she turned to me, and said, 
' I remember at the playhouse, they used to call, 
Mrs. Oldfield's chair ! Mrs. Barry's clogs ! and 
Mrs. Bracegirdle's pattens!'"* One pictures 
a handsome old lady, a little bent, and leaning 
on a crutch stick as she delivers this parting 
utterance at the door, f 

Among the occurrences of 1742 which find 
fitting record in the correspondence, is the 
opening of that formidable rival to Vauxhall, 
Ranelagh Gardens. All through the spring 
the great Rotunda, with its encircling tiers of 
galleries and supper- boxes, — the coup d'ozil 
of which Johnson thought was the finest thing 
he had ever seen, had been rising slowly at 

* Walpole to Mann, 26 May, nobleman, lying in wait for his 

1742. P re y> came up and embraced Mr. 

t According to Pinkerton, an- Shorter, by mistake, saying ' Dear 

other anecdote connects Mrs. Mountfort ! ' It was fortunate 

Bracegirdle with the Walpoles. that he was instantly undeceived, 

" Mr. Shorter, my mother's father for Mr. Shorter had hardlyreached 

(he makes Horace say), was walk- his house before the murder took 

ing down Norfolk Street in the place " ( Walpoliana, ii, 96). 

Strand, to his house there, just be- Mountfort it will be remembered 

fore poor Mountfort the player owed his death to Mrs. Bracegir- 

was killed in that street, by assas- die's liking for him. 
sins hired by Lord Mohun. This 



108 Horace Walpolc : A Meinoir. 

the side of Chelsea Hospital. In April it was 
practically completed and ready for visitors. 
Walpole of course breakfasts there like the 
rest of the beau monde. "The building is not 
finished (he says), but they get great sums by 
people going to see it and breakfasting in the 
house : there were yesterday no less than three 
hundred and eighty persons, at eighteenpence 
a piece. You see how poor we are, when, with 
a tax of four shillings in the pound, we are 
laying out such sums for cakes and ale." * A 
week or two later it was opened officially. 
"Two nights ago Ranelagh- gardens were 
opened at Chelsea; the Prince, Princess, Duke, 
much nobility, and much mob besides, were 
there. There is a vast amphitheatre, finely 
gilt, painted and illuminated, into which every- 
body that loves eating, drinking, staring, or 
crowding, is admitted for twelvepence. The 
building and disposition of the gardens cost 
sixteen thousand pounds. Twice a week there 
are to be Ridottos at guinea-tickets, for which 
you are to have a supper and music. I was 
there last night [May 25], — the writer adds — 

* Walpole to Mann, 22 April, 1742. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 109 

but did not find the joy of it,"* and, at pres- 
ent, he prefers Vauxhall because of the 
approach by water, that trajet du Jleuve 
fatal — as it is styled in the Vauxhall de 
Londres which a French poet dedicated in 
1 769 to M. de Fontenelle. He seems, however, 
to have taken Lord Orford to Ranelagh, and 
he records in July that they walked with a 
train at their heels like two chairmen going 
to fight — from which he argues a return of 
his father's popularity. Two years later Fash- 
ion has declared itself on the side of the new 
garden, and Walpole has gone over to the side 
of Fashion. " Every night constantly (he tells 
Conway) I go to Ranelagh; which has totally 
beat Vauxhall. Nobody goes anywhere else — 
everybody goes there. My Lord Chesterfield 
is so fond of it, that he says he has ordered all 
his letters to be directed thither. If you had 
never seen it, I would make you a most pom- 
pous description of it, and tell you how the floor 
is all of beaten princes, — that you can't set 
your foot without treading on a Prince of 
Wales or Duke of Cumberland. The com- 

* Walpole to Matin, 26 May, 1742. 



no Horace Waplole : A Memoir. 

pany is universal: there is from his Grace of 
Grafton down to children out of the Foundling 
Hospital, from my Lady Townshend to the 
kitten — from my Lord Sandys to your humble 
cousin and sincere friend." * 

After Lord Orford's death, the next land- 
mark in Horace Walpole's life is his removal 
to the house at Twickenham, subsequently 
known as Strawberry Hill. To a description 
of this historical mansion the next chapter will 
be in part devoted. In the mean time, we may 
linger for a moment upon the record which 
these letters contain of the famous '45. No 
better opportunity will probably occur of ex- 
hibiting Walpole as the reporter of history in 
the process of making. Much that he tells 
Mann and Montagu is no doubt little more 
than the skimming of the last Gazette, but he 
had always access to trustworthy information, 
and is seldom a dull reporter even of news- 
paper news. Almost the next letter to that 
in which he dwells at length upon the loss of 
his father, records the disaster of Tournay or 
Fontenoy, in which, he tells Mann, Mr. Conway 
has highly distinguished himself, magnificently 

* Walpole to Conway, 29 June, 1 744. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 1 1 1 

engaging — as appears from a subsequent com- 
munication — no less than two French gren- 
adiers at once. His account of the battle is 
bare enough; but what apparently interests 
him most is the patriotic conduct of the Prince 
of Wales, who made a chanson on the occasion 
after the fashion of the Regent Orleans: — 

" Venez, mes cheres Deesses, 
Venez calmer mon chagrin ; 
Aidez, mes belles Princesses, 
A le noyer dans le vin. 
Poussons cette douce Ivresse 
Jusqu'au milieu de la nuit, 
Et n'ecoutons que la tendresse 
D'un charmant vis-a-vis. 



" Que m'importe, que l'Europe 
Ait un, ou plusieurs tyrans ? 
Prions seulement Calliope, 
Qu'elle inspire nos vers, nos chants. 
Laissons Mars et toute la gloire ; 
Livrons nous tous a l'amour ; 
Que Bacchus nous dorme a boire; 
A ces deux fasions (sic J la cour." 

The goddesses addressed were Lady Cath- 
erine Hanmer, Lady Fauconberg, and Lady 
Middlesex, who played Congreve's Judgment 
of Paris at Leicester House, with His Royal 



ii2 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

Highness as Paris, and Prince Lobkowitz for 
Mercury. Walpole says of the song that it 
"miscarried in nothing but the language, the 
thoughts, and the poetry." Yet he copies the 
whole five verses, of which the above are two, 
for Mann's delectation. 

A more logical sequence to Fontenoy than 
the lyric of Leicester House, is the descent of 
Charles Edward upon Scotland. In August 
Walpole reports to Mann that there is a 
proclamation out "for apprehending the Pre- 
tender's son," who had landed in July; in Sep- 
tember he is marching on Edinburgh. Ten 
days later the writer is speculating half rue- 
fully upon the possibilities of being turned out 
of his comfortable sinecures in favour of some 
forlorn Irish Peer. " I shall wonderfully dislike 
being a loyal sufferer in a thread-bare coat, 
and shivering in an ante-chamber at Hanover, 
or reduced to teach Latin and English to the 
young princes at Copenhagen. The Dowager 
Strafford has already written cards for my Lady 
Nithsdale, my Lady Tullibardine, the Duchess 
of Perth and Berwick, and twenty more revived 
peeresses, to invite them to play at whisk, Mon- 
day three months: for your part, you will divert 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 1 1 3 

yourself with their old taffeties, and tarnished 
slippers, and their awkwardness, the first day 
they go to Court in shifts and clean linen. Will 
you ever write to me in my garret at Herren- 
hausen ? " * Then upon this come the contra- 
dictions of rumour, the " general supineness," the 
raising of regiments, and the disaster of Preston 
Pans, with its inevitable condemnation of Cope. 
" I pity poor him, who with no shining abilities, 
and no experience, and no force, was sent to 
fight for a crown! He never saw a battle but 
that of Dettingen, where he got his red ribbon: 
Churchill, whose led-captain he was, and my 
Lord Harrington, had pushed him up to this 
misfortune.f We have lost all our artillery, five 
hundred men taken — and three killed, and sev- 
eral officers, as you will see in the papers. This 
defeat has frightened everybody but those it re- 
joices, and those it should frighten most; but 
my Lord Granville still buoys up the King's 
spirits, and persuades him it is nothing." J 

v Walpole to Mann, 17 Sept., ferior officers, and his troops, 

1745. were greatly to blame: and 

t Walpole later revised this ver. that he did all he could, so ill- 

dict : — " General Cope was tried directed, so ill-supplied, and so 

afterwards for his behaviour in ill-obeyed." 

this action, and it appeared very % Walpole to Mann, 27 Sept., 

clearly, that the Ministry, his in- 1745- 



114 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

Nothing, indeed, it proved in the issue. But 
Walpole was wiser in his immediate apprehen- 
sions than King George's advisers, who were 
not wise. In his subsequent letters we get 
scattered glimpses of the miserable story that 
ended in Culloden. Towards the end of Octo- 
ber he is auguring hopefully from the protracted 
neglect of the rebels to act upon their success. 
In November they are in England. But the 
backwardness of the Jacobites to join them is 
already evident, and he writes " in the greatest 
confidence of our getting over this ugly busi- 
ness." Early in December they have reached 
Derby, only to be soon gone again, miserably 
harassed, and leaving their sick and cannon 
behind. With the new year come tidings to 
Mann that the rebellion is dying down in Eng- 
land, and that General Hawley has marched 
northward to put it quite out. Once more, 
on the 23rd February, it flares fitfully at Fal- 
kirk, and then fades as suddenly. The battle 
that Walpole hourly expects, not without some 
trepidation, for Conway is one of the Duke of 
Cumberland's aides-de-camp, is still deferred, 
and it is April before the two armies face each 
other on Culloden Moor. Then he writes jubi- 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 1 1 5 

lantly to his Florentine correspondent: — " On 
the 1 6th, the Duke, by forced marches, came 
up with the rebels, a little on this side Inver- 
ness — by the way, the battle is not christened 
yet, I only know that neither Preston Pans nor 
Falkirk are to be god-fathers. The rebels who 
had fled from him after their victory [of Fal- 
kirk], and durst not attack him, when so much 
exposed to them at his passage of the Spey, 
now stood him, they seven thousand, he ten. 
They broke through Barril's regiment and 
killed Lord Robert Ker, a handsome young 
gentleman, who was cut to pieces with above 
thirty wounds ; but they were soon repulsed, 
and fled ; the whole engagement not lasting 
above a quarter of an hour. The young Pre- 
tender escaped ; Mr. Conway says, he hears, 
wounded : he certainly was in the rear. They 
have lost above a thousand men in the engage- 
ment and pursuit; and six hundred were already 
taken ; among which latter are their French 
Ambassador and Earl Kilmarnock. The Duke 
of Perth and Lord Ogilvie are said to be 
slain. . . . Except Lord Robert Ker we lost no- 
body of note : Sir Robert Rich's eldest son has 
lost his hand, and about a hundred and thirty 



1 1 6 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

private men fell. The defeat is reckoned total, 
and the dispersion general; and all their artillery 
is taken. It is a brave young Duke ! The town is 
all blazing round me [i. e., at Arlington Street], 
as I write, with fire works and illuminations: 
I have some inclination to wrap up half-a-dozen 
sky-rockets, to make you drink the Duke's 
health. Mr. Dodington [in Pall Mall], on the 
first report, came out with a very pretty illumi- 
nation ; so pretty, that I believe he had it by 
him, ready for any occasion."* 

Walpole's account of these occurrences is, of 
course, hearsay, although, as regards Culloden, 
he probably derived the details from Conway, 
who was present. But in some of the events 
which ensued, he is either actually a spectator 
himself, or fresh from direct communication with 
those who have been spectators. One of the 
most graphic passages in his entire correspon- 
dence is his description of the trial of the rebel 
lords, at which he assisted ; and another is his 
narrative of the executions of Kilmarnock and 
Balmerino, written down from the relation of 
eye-witnesses. It is hardly possible to get much 
nearer to history. 

* Walpole to Mann, 25 April, 1746. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 1 1 7 

"I am this moment come from the conclusion 
of the greatest and most melancholy scene I 
ever yet saw ! You will easily guess it was the 
Trials of the rebel Lords. As it was the most 
interesting sight, it was the most solemn and 
fine: a coronation is a puppet-show, and the 
splendour of it idle ; but this sight at once feasted 
one's eyes and engaged all one's passions. It 
began last Monday ; three parts of Westmin- 
ster-hall were inclosed with galleries, and hung 
with scarlet; and the whole ceremony was con- 
ducted with the most awful solemnity and de- 
cency, except in the one point of leaving the 
prisoners at the bar, amidst the idle curiosity 
of some crowd, and even with the witnesses 
who had sworn against them, while the Lords 
adjourned to their own House to consult. No 
part of the royal family was there, which was a 
proper regard to the unhappy men, who were 
become their victims. ... I had armed myself 
with all the resolution I could, with the thought 
of their crimes, and of the danger past, and was 
assisted by the sight of the Marquis of Lothian 
in weepers for his son [Lord Robert Ker] who 
fell at Culloden — but the first appearance of 
the prisoners shocked me ! their behaviour 



1 1 8 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

melted me." After going on to speak of Lord 
Kilmarnock and Lord Cromartie (afterwards 
reprieved) he continues: — "For Lord Balme- 
rino, he is the most natural brave old fellow I 
ever saw : the highest intrepidity, even to in- 
difference. At the bar he behaved like a sol- 
dier and a man ; in the intervals of form, with 
carelessness and humour. He pressed ex- 
tremely to have his wife, his pretty Peggy 
[Margaret Chalmers], with him in the Tower. 
Lady Cromartie only sees her husband through 
the grate, not choosing to be shut up with him, 
as she thinks she can serve him better by her 
intercession without: she is big with child and 
very handsome : so are their daughters. When 
they were to be brought from the Tower in sep- 
arate coaches, there was some dispute in which 
the axe must go — old Balmerino cried, 'Come, 
come, put it with me.' At the bar he plays 
with his fingers upon the axe, while he talks to 
the gentleman-gaoler; and one day somebody 
coming up to listen, he took the blade and held 
it like a fan between their faces. During the 
trial, a little boy was near him, but not tall 
enough to see; he made room for the child and 
placed him near himself. " * 

* Walpole to Mann, I Aug., 1746. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 1 1 9 

Balmerino's gallant demeanour evidently fas- 
cinated Walpole. In his next letter he relates 
how on his way back to the Tower the sturdy 
old dragoon had stopped the coach at Charing 
Cross to buy some "honey-blobs" (gooseber- 
ries) ; and when afterwards he comes to write 
his account of the execution, although he tells 
the story of Kilmarnock's death with feeling, 
the best passage is given to his companion in 
misfortune. He describes how (on the fatal 
15th August), before he left the Tower, Balme- 
rino drank a bumper to King James ; how he 
wore his rebellious regimentals (blue and red) 
over a flannel waistcoat and his shroud ; how 
embracing Lord Kilmarnock he said, " My Lord, 
I wish I could suffer for both." Then followed 
the beheading of Kilmarnock, and the narra- 
tor goes on: — "The scaffold was immediately 
new-strewed with saw dust, the block new- 
covered, the executioner new-dressed, and a 
new axe brought. Then came old Balmerino, 
treading with the air of a general. As soon as 
he mounted the scaffold, he read the inscription 
on his coffin as he did again afterwards : he then 
surveyed the spectators, who were in amazing 
numbers, even upon masts upon ships in the 
river ; and pulling out his spectacles read a 



120 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

treasonable speech, which he delivered to the 
Sheriff, and said, the young Pretender was so 
sweet a Prince, that flesh and blood could not 
resist following him ; and lying down to try the 
block, he said, ' If I had a thousand lives, I 
would lay them all down here in the same cause ! ' 
He said, if he had not taken the sacrament the 
day before, he would have knocked down Wil- 
liamson, the Lieutenant of the Tower, for his 
ill-usage of him. He took the axe and felt it 
and asked the headsman how many blows he 
had given Lord Kilmarnock ; and gave him 
three guineas. Two clergymen, who attended 
him, coming up, he said, ' No, gentlemen, I 
believe you have already done me all the ser- 
vice you can.' Then he went to the corner of 
the scaffold, and called very loud for the warder 
to give him his perriwig, which he took off, and 
put on a night-cap of Scotch plaid, and then 
pulled off his coat and waistcoat and lay down ; 
but being told he was on the wrong side, vaulted 
round, and immediately gave the sign by toss- 
ing up his arm, as if he were giving the signal 
for battle. He received three blows, but the 
first certainly took away all sensation. He 
was not a quarter of an hour on the scaffold ; 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 121 

Lord Kilmarnock above half a one. Balme- 
rino certainly died with the intrepidity of a 
hero, but the insensibility of one too. As he 
walked from his prison to execution, seeing 
every window and top of house filled with 
spectators, he cried out, ' Look, look, how they 
are all piled up like rotten oranges. ' " * 

In the old print of the execution, the scaffold 
on Tower Hill is shown surrounded by a wide 
square of dragoons, beyond which the crowd — 
"the immense display of human countenances 
which surrounded it like a sea," as Scott has 
it — are visible on every side. No. 14 Tower 
Hill is said to have been the house from which 
the two lords were led to the block, and a trail 
of blood along the hall and up the first flight of 
stairs was long shown as indicating the route 
by which their mutilated bodies were borne to 
await interment in St. Peter's Chapel. A few 
months later Walpole records the execution in 

* Walpole to Mann, 21 August, Wharton, August). " Old Balme- 

1746. Gray, who was at the trial, rino, when he had read his paper 

also mentions Balmerino, not so to the people, pulled off his spec- 

enthusiastically. " He is an old tacles, spit upon his handker- 

soldier-like man, of a vulgar man- chief, and wiped them clean for 

ner and aspect, speaks the broadest the use of his posterity; and 

Scotch, and shews an intrepidity, that is the last page of his his- 

that some ascribe to real courage, tory " {Letter to Wharton, II 

and some to brandy" {Letter to Sept., 1746). 

9 



122 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

the same place of Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, 
the cunning old Jacobite whose characteristic 
attitude and "pawky" expression live forever 
in the admirable sketch which Hogarth made 
of him at St. Albans. He died (says Walpole) 
" extremely well, without passion, affectation, 
buffoonery, or timidity." But he is not so dis- 
tinguished as either Kilmarnock or Balmerino, 
and, however Roman his taking-ofif, the chief 
memorable thing about it is, that it was happily 
the last of these sanguinary scenes in this 
country. The only other incident which it is 
here needful to chronicle in connection with the 
"Forty Five" is Walpole's verses on the Sup- 
pression of the late Rebellion. On the 4th 
and 5th November, the anniversaries of King 
William's birth and landing, it was the custom 
to play Rowe's Tamerlane, and this year (1746) 
the epilogue spoken by Mrs. Pritchard "in the 
character of the Comic Muse " was from Wal- 
pole's pen. According to the writer special 
terrors had threatened the stage from the ad- 
vent of " Rome's young missionary spark," the 
Chevalier, and the Tragic Muse, raising, "to 
eyes well-tutored in the trade of grief," "a 
small and well-lac'd handkerchief," is repre- 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 123 

sented by her lighter sister as bewailing the 
prospect to her "buskin'd progeny " after this 
fashion : — 

" Ah sons, our dawn is over-cast ; and all 
Theatric glories nodding to their fall. 
From foreign realms a bloody chief is come, 
Big with the work of slav'ry and of Rome. 
A general ruin on his sword he wears, 
Fatal alike to audience and to play'rs. 
For ah ! my sons, what freedom for the stage 
When bigotry with sense shall battle wage ? 
When monkish laureats only wear the bays, 
Inquisitors lord chamberlains of plays ? 
Plays shall be damn'd that 'scap'd the critic's rage 
For priests are still worse tyrants to the stage. 
Cato, received by audiences so gracious, 
Shall find ten Caesars in one St. Ignatius, 
And god-like Brutus here shall meet again 
His evil genius as a capuchin. 
For heresy the fav'rites of the pit 
Must burn, and excommunicated wit; 
And at one stake, we shall behold expire 
My Anna Bullen, and the Spanish Fryar." * 

After this the epilogue digresses into a com- 
parison of the Duke of Cumberland with King 
William. Virgil, Juvenal, Addison, Dryden, and 
Pope, upon one of whose lines on Cibber Wal- 
pole bases his reference to the Lord Chamber- 
lain, are all laid under contribution in this per- 

* Walpole's Works, 1798, i, 25-7. 



124 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

formance. It "succeeded to flatter me" — he 
tells Mann a few days later, — a Gallicism from 
which we must infer an enthusiastic reception. 

Walpole's personal and domestic history does 
not present much interest at this period. Of 
his sister Mary (Catherine Shorter's daughter), 
who had married the Earl of Cholmondeley, we 
hear little or nothing. In February, 1746, his 
half sister, Lady Maria, his partner at comet 
in the Houghton days, married Mr. Churchill — 
"a foolish match," says Horace, to which he 
will have nothing to say. With his second 
brother, Sir Edward Walpole, he seems to have 
had but little intercourse, and that scarcely of 
a fraternal character. In 1857, Cunningham 
published for the first time a very angry letter 
from Edward to his junior, in which the latter 
was bitterly reproached for his interference in 
disposing of the family borough of Castle 
Rising, and (incidentally) for his assumption of 
superiority, mental and otherwise. To this 
communication Walpole prepared a most caustic 
and categorical answer, which, however, he never 
sent. For his nieces, Edward Walpole's natural 
daughters, of whom it will be more convenient 
to speak later, Horace seems always to have felt 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 125 

a sincere regard. But although his brother 
had tastes which must have been akin to his 
own, for Edward Walpole was in his way an 
art patron (Roubiliac the sculptor, for instance, 
was much indebted to him) and a respectable 
musician, no real cordiality ever existed between 
them. " There is nothing in the world " — he tells 
Montagu — "the Baron of Englefield has such 
an aversion for as his brother."* 

For his elder brother's wife, the Lady Wal- 
pole who had formed one of the learned trio at 
Florence, he entertained no kind of respect, and 
his letters are full of flouts at Her Ladyship's 
manners and morality. Indeed, between precio- 
site and "Platonic love," her life does not ap- 
pear to have been a particularly worshipful one, 
and her long sojourn under Italian skies had 
not improved her. At present she was Lady 
Orford, her husband, who is seldom mentioned, 
and from whom she had been living apart, 
having succeeded to the title at his father's 
death. From Walpole's letters to Mann, it 
seems that in April, 1 745, she was, much to the 
dismay of her relatives, already preening her 

* Englefield, i. e. — Englefield of Cooper's Hill, near Windsor, 
Green, in Berks., on the summit where Edward Walpole lived. 

9* 



126 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

wings for England. In September, she has ar- 
rived, and Walpole is maliciously delighted at 
the cold welcome she obtains from the Court 
and from society in general, with the exception 
of her old colleague, Lady Pomfret, and, that 
in one sense congenial spirit, Lady Townshend. 
Later on, a definite separation from her husband 
appears to have been agreed upon, which Wal- 
pole fondly hopes may have the effect of bring- 
ing about her departure for Italy. " The Ladies 
Ofrford] andT[ownshend] " — he says — "have 
exhausted scandal both in their persons and 
conversations." However much this may be 
exaggerated (and Walpole never spares his 
antipathies), the last we hear of Lady Orford 
is certainly on his side — for she has retired from 
town to a villa near Richmond with a lover for 
whom she has postponed that southward flight 
which her family so ardently desired. This 
fortunate Endymion, the Hon. Sewallis Shirley, 
son of Robert, first Earl Ferrers, had already 
been one of the most favoured lovers of the 
notorious "lady of quality" whose memoirs 
were afterwards foisted into Peregrine Pickle. 
To Lady Vane now succeeded Lady Orford, as 
eminent for wealth — says sarcastic Lady Mary 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 127 

Wortley Montagu — as her predecessor had 
been for beauty, and equal in "her heroic con- 
tempt for shame." This new connection was 
destined to endure. It was in September, 1 746, 
that Walpole chronicled his sister-in-law's latest 
frailty, and in May, 1 75 1, only a few weeks after 
her husband's death,* she married Shirley at 
the Rev. Alexander Keith's convenient "little 
chapel in May Fair." 

In 1 744, died Alexander Pope, to be followed 
a year later by the great Dean of St. Patrick's. 
Neither of these events leaves any lasting mark 
in Walpole's correspondence, indeed of Swift's 
death there is no mention at all. A nearer be- 
reavement was the premature loss of West, 
which had taken place three years before, clos- 
ing sorrowfully with faint accomplishment a life 
of promise. Vale, et vive paulisper cum vivis — 
he had written a few days earlier to Gray — his 
friend to the last. With Gray, Walpole's friend- 
ship, as will be seen presently, had been re- 
sumed. His own literary essays still lie chiefly in 
the domain of squib and jeu d' esprit. In April, 
1746, over the appropriate signature of " Des- 

* Robert Walpole, second Earl eldest brother, died in March, 
of Orford, Horace Walpole's 1751. 



128 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

cartes," he printed in No. II of The Museum 
a " Scheme for Raising a Large Sum of Money 
for the Use of the Government, by laying a tax on 
Message- Cards and Notes," and in No. Va pre- 
tended Advertisement and Table of Contents for 
a History of Good Breeding, from the Creation 
of the World, by the Author of the Whole Duty 
of Man. The wit of this is a little laboured, and 
scarcely goes beyond the announcement that 
"The Eight last Volumes, which relate to Ger- 
many, may be had separate," nor does that of 
the other exceed a mild reflection of Fielding's 
manner in some of his minor pieces. Among 
other things, we gather that it was the custom 
of the fine ladies of the day to send open mes- 
sages on blank playing-cards, and it is stated 
as a fact or a fancy that "after the fatal day of 
Fontenoy," persons of quality " all wrote their 
notes on Indian paper, which being red, when 
inscribed with Japan ink, made a melancholy 
military kind of elegy on the brave youths who 
occasioned the fashion, and were often the hon- 
ourable subject of the epistle." The only re- 
maining effort of any importance at this time is 
the little poem of The Beauties, somewhat re- 
calling Gay's Prologue to the Shepherd's Week, 



Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 129 

and written in July, 1 746, to Eckardt the painter. 
Here is a specimen: — 

" In smiling Capel's bounteous look 
Rich autumn's goddess is mistook. 
With poppies, and with spiky corn, 
Eckardt, her nut-brown curls adorn ; 
And by her side, in decent line, 
Place charming Berkeley, Proserpine. 
Mild as a summer sea, serene, 
In dimpled beauty next be seen 
Aylesb'ry, like hoary Neptune's queen. 
With her the light-dispensing fair, 
Whose beauty gilds the morning air, 
And bright as her attendant sun, 
The new Aurora, Lyttelton. 
Such Guido's pencil beauty-tip'd, 
And in ethereal colours dip'd, 
In measur'd dance to tuneful song 
Drew the sweet goddess, as along 
Heaven's azure 'neath their light feet spread 
The buxom hours the fairest led." * 

" Charming Berkeley," here mentioned, after- 
wards became the third wife of Goldsmith's 
friend, Earl Nugent, and the mother of the 
little girl who played tricks upon the author of 
She Stoops to Conquer at her father's country 
seat of Gosfield; "Aylesb'ry, like hoary Nep- 
tune's queen," married Walpole's friend, Henry 
Conway, and " the new Aurora, Lyttelton," 

* Walpole's Works, 1798, i, 21-2. 



130 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

was that charming Lucy Fortescue upon whose 
death her husband wrote the monody so piti- 
lessly parodied by Smollett.* Lady Almeria 
Carpenter, Lady Emily Lenox, Miss Chud- 
leigh (afterwards the notorious Duchess of 
Kingston), and many other well-known names, 
quos nunc perscribere longum est, are also 
celebrated. 

In August, 1 746, Walpole announces to Mann 
that he has taken a pretty house within the 
precincts of the castle at Windsor, to which he 
is going for the remainder of the summer. In 
September he has entered upon residence, for 
Gray tells Wharton that he sees him " usually 
once a week." "All is mighty free, and even 
friendly more than one could expect" — and 
one of the first things posted off to Conway, 
is Gray's Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton 
College, which the sender desires he " will please 
to like excessively." He is drawn from his retreat 
by the arrival of a young Florentine friend, the 
Marquis Rinuncini, to whom he has to do the 

* Writing to Walpole in March, a parody of part of his monody, 

175 1, Gray says — "In the last under the notion of a Pastoral on 

volume [of Peregrine Pickle] is a the death of his Grandmother" 

character of Mr. Lyttelton, under {Works, by Gosse, 1884, ii, 214). 
the name of 'Gosling Scrag,' and 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 131 

London honours. "I stayed literally an entire 
week with him, carried him to see palaces and 
Richmond gardens and park, and Chenevix's 
shop, and talked a great deal to him alle conver- 
sazioni" * "Chenevix's shop" suggests the 
main subject of the next chapter — the purchase 
and occupation of Strawberry Hill. 

* Walpole to Mann, 15 Sept., 1746. 





^£2S^C^^|ZS , 25-Z»**0 



CHAPTER V. 

The new house at Twickenham ; its first tenants ; christened 
"Strawberry Hill" ; planting and embellishing j fresh addi- 
tions j WalpoWs description of it in 1753 ->' visitors and ad- 
mirers ; Lord Bath's verses ; some rival mansions ; minor 
literature ; robbed by James M'Lean y sequel from " The 
World" ; the M'Lean mania; high life at Vauxhall ; 
contributions to " The World" j Theodore of Corsica ; recon- 
ciliation with Gray j stimulates his works; the " Po'emata- 
Grayo-Bentleiana ; Richard Bentley ; Miintz the artist j 
dwellers at Twickenham j Lady Suffolk and Mrs. Clive. 






-tC^ 



LjsM w 



^MC_. 




V. 



ON the 5th of June, 1 747, Walpole announces 
to Mann that he has taken a little new 
farm, just out of Twickenham. "The house is 
so small, that I can send it to you in a letter to 
look at : the prospect is as delightful as possible, 
commanding the river, the town [Twickenham], 
and Richmond Park; and being situated on a 
hill descends to the Thames through two or 
three little meadows, where I have some Turk- 

135 



136 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

ish sheep and two cows, all studied in their col- 
ours for becoming the view. This little rural 
bijou was Mrs. Chenevix's, the toy-woman a la 
mode, who in every dry season is to furnish me 
with the best rain water from Paris, and now 
and then with some Dresden-china cows, who 
are to figure like wooden classics in a library : 
so I shall grow as much a shepherd as any 
swain in the Astraea." Three days later, fur- 
ther details are added in a letter to Conway, 
then in Flanders with the Duke of Cumber- 
land: — "You perceive by my date [Twicken- 
ham, 8 June] that I am got into a new camp, 
and have left my tub at Windsor. It is a little 
play-thing-house, that I got out of Mrs. Chen- 
evix's shop, and is the prettiest bauble you ever 
saw. It is set in enamelled meadows, with fili- 
gree hedges : — 

" ' A small Euphrates through the piece is roll'd, 
And little finches wave their wings in gold. '* 

"Two delightful roads, that you would call 
dusty, supply me continually with coaches and 
chaises : barges as solemn as Barons of the Ex- 
chequer move under my window ; Richmond 

* This is slightly varied from a ("To Mr. Addison: Occasioned 
couplet in Pope's fifth Moral Essay by his Dialogues on Medals"). 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 137 

Hill and Ham Walks bound my prospect ; . . . 
Dowagers as plenty as flounders inhabit all 
around, and Pope's ghost is just now skimming 
under my window by a most poetical moonlight. 
I have about land enough to keep such a farm as 
Noah's, when he set up in the ark with a pair of 
each kind ; but my cottage is rather cleaner than 
I believe his was after they had been cooped 
up together forty days. The Chenevixes had 
tricked it out for themselves: up two pair of 
stairs is what they call Mr. Chenevix's library, 
furnished with three maps, one shelf, a bust of 
Sir Isaac Newton, and a lame telescope without 
any glasses. Lord John Sackville predecessed me 
here, and instituted certain games called crick- 
etalia, which have been celebrated this very 
evening in honour of him in a neighbouring 
meadow." * 

The house thus fantastically described, which 
grew into the Gothic structure afterwards so 
closely associated with its owner's name, was 
not, even at this date, without its history. It 
stood on the left bank of the Thames, at the 
corner of the Upper Road to Teddington, not 
very far from Twickenham itself. It had been 

* Walpole to Conway, 8 June, 1747. 



138 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

built about 1698 as a "country box" by a re- 
tired coachman of the Earl of Bradford, and, 
from the fact that he was supposed to have ac- 
quired his means by starving his master's horses, 
was known popularly as Chopped-Straw Hall. 
Its first possessor not long afterwards let it out 
as a lodging-house, and finally, after several im- 
provements, sub-let it altogether. One of its 
first tenants was Colley Cibber, who found it 
convenient when he was in attendance for acting 
at Hampton Court ; and he is said to have writ- 
ten in it the comedy called The Refusal ; or, the 
Ladies Philosophy, produced at Drury Lane in 
1 72 1. Then, for eight years, it was rented by 
the Bishop of Durham, Dr. Talbot, who was 
reported to have kept in it a better table than 
the extent of its kitchen seemed, in Walpole's 
judgment, to justify. After the Bishop came a 
Marquis, Henry Bridges, son of the Duke of 
Chandos ; after the Marquis, Mrs. Chenevix, the 
toy-woman who, upon her husband's death, let it 
for two years to the nobleman who predecessed 
Walpole, Lord John Philip Sackville. Before 
this Mrs. Chenevix had taken lodgers, one of 
whom was the celebrated theologian, Pere Le 
Courrayer. At the expiration of Lord Sack- 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 139 

ville's tenancy, Walpole took the remainder of 
Mrs. Chenevix's lease; and in 1748 had grown 
to like the situation so much that he obtained a 
special act to purchase the fee simple from the 
existing possessors, three minors of the name 
of Mortimer. The price he paid was ^1356 10s. 
Nothing was then wanting but the name, and 
in looking over some old deeds this was sup- 
plied. He found that the ground on which it 
stood had been known originally as "Straw- 
berry-Hill-Shot." "You shall hear from me," 
he tells'Mann in June, 1 748, "from Strawberry 
Hill, which I have found out in my lease is the 
old name of my house ; so pray, never call it 
Twickenham again." 

The transformation of the toy-woman's "villa- 
kin " into a Gothic residence was not, however, 
the operation of a day. Indeed, at first, the 
idea of rebuilding does not seem to have entered 
its new owner's mind. But he speedily set about 
extending his boundaries, for before 26 Decem- 
ber, 1 748, he has added nine acres to his origi- 
nal five, making fourteen in all — a "territory 
prodigious in a situation where land is so 
scarce." Among the tenants of some of the 
buildings which he acquired in making these 



140 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

additions was Richard Franklyn, the printer of 
the Crafts7nan, who, during Sir Robert Wal- 
pole's administration, had been taken up for 
printing that paper. He occupied a small house 
in what was afterwards known as the Flower 
Garden, and Walpole permitted him to retain it 
during his life-time. Walpole's letters towards 
the close of 1 748 contain numerous references 
to his assiduity in planting. " My present and 
sole occupation," he says in August, "is plant- 
ing, in which I have made great progress, and 
talk very learnedly with the nurserymen, except 
that now and then a lettuce run to seed over- 
turns all my botany, as I have more than once 
taken it for a curious West-Indian flowering 
shrub. Then the deliberation with which trees 
grow, is extremely inconvenient to my natural 
impatience." Two months later he is "all plan- 
tation, and sprouts away like any chaste nymph 
in the Metamorphosis." In December, we begin 
to hear of that famous lawn so well known in 
the later history of the house. He is " mak- 
ing a terrace the whole breadth of his garden 
on the brow of a natural hill, with meadows at 
the foot, and commanding the river, the village 
[Twickenham], Richmond-hill, and the park, 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 141 

and part of Kingston." A year after this (Sep- 
tember, 1749), while he is still "digging and 
planting till it is dark," come the first dreams 
of building. At Cheneys, in Buckinghamshire, 
he has seen some old stained glass, in the 
windows of an ancient house which had been 
degraded into a farm, and he thinks he will 
beg it of the Duke of Bedford (to whom the 
farm belongs), as it would be "magnificent 
for Strawberry-castle." Evidently he has dis- 
cussed this (as yet) chateau en Espagne with 
Montagu. " Did I tell you (he says) that I 
have found a text in Deuteronomy to authorise 
my future battlements? 'When thou buildest 
a new house, then shalt thou make a battlement 
for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon thy 
house, if any man fall from thence.' " In January, 
the new building is an established fact, as far as 
purpose is concerned. In a postscript to Mann 
he writes : — " I must trouble you with a commis- 
sion, which I don't know whether you can exe- 
cute. I am going to btiild a little golhic castle 
at Strawberry Hill. If you can pick me up any 
fragments of old painted glass, arms, or any- 
thing, I shall be excessively obliged to you. I 

can't say I remember any such things in Italy ; 
10* 



142 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

but out of old chateaus, I imagine, one might 
get it cheap, if there is any." 

From a subsequent letter it would seem that 
Mann, as a resident in Italy, had rather ex- 
postulated against the style of architecture 
which his friend was about to adopt, and had 
suggested the Grecian. But Walpole, rightly 
or wrongly, knew what he intended. "The 
Grecian," he said, was " only proper for mag- 
nificent and public buildings. Columns and all 
their beautiful ornaments, look ridiculous when 
crowded into a closet or a cheesecake-house. 
The variety is little, and admits no charming 
irregularities. I am almost as fond of the S/iar- 
awaggi, or Chinese want of symmetry, in build- 
ings, as in grounds or gardens. I am sure, 
whenever you come to England, you will be 
pleased with the liberty of taste into which we 
are struck, and of which you can have no idea." 
The passage shows that he himself anticipated 
some of the ridicule which was levelled by un- 
sympathetic people at the "oyster-grotto-like- 
profanation " which he gradually erected by the 
Thames. In the meantime it went on progress- 
ing slowly, as its progress was entirely depen- 
dent on his savings out of income, and the 



Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 143 

references to it in his letters, perhaps because 
Mann was doubtful, are not abundant. "The 
library, and refectory or great parlour," he says 
in his description, "were entirely new built in 
1 753 ; the gallery, round tower, great cloyster, 
and cabinet, in 1760 and 1761 ; and the great 
north bedchamber in 1770." To speak of these 
later alterations would be to anticipate too much, 
and the further description of Strawberry Hill 
will be best deferred until his own account of the 
house and contents was printed in 1774, four 
years after the last addition above recorded. But 
even before he made the earliest of them, he 
must have done much to alter and improve the 
aspect of the place, for Gray, more admiring 
than Mann, praises what has been done. " I 
am glad," he tells Wharton, "that you enter 
into the spirit of Strawberry-castle. It has a 
purity and propriety of Gothicism in it (with 
very few exceptions) that I have not seen else- 
where"; and in an earlier letter he implies that 
its "extreme littleness" is its chief deect. But 
here, before for the moment leaving the sub- 
ject, it is only fair to give the proprietor's own 
description of Strawberry Hill at this date, i. e., 
in June, 1753. After telling Mann that it is 



144 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

"so monastic" that he has " a little hall decked 
with long saints in lean arched windows and 
with taper columns, which we call the Paraclete, 
in memory of Eloisa's cloister,"* he sends him 
a sketch of it, and goes on : — " The enclosed 
enchanted little landscape, then, is Strawberry 
Hill . . . This view of the castle is what I 
have just finished [it was a view of the south 
side, towards the north-east], and is the only 
side that will be at all regular. Directly be- 
fore it is an open grove, through which you 
see a field, which is bounded by a serpentine 
wood of all kinds of trees, and flowering shrubs, 
and flowers. The lawn before the house is situ- 
ated on the top of a small hill, from whence to 
the left you see the town and church of Twick- 
enham encircling a turn of the river, that looks 
exactly like a sea-port in miniature. The oppo- 
site shore is a most delicious meadow, bounded 
by Richmond Hill, which loses itself in the 
noble woods of the park to the end of the pros- 
pect on the right, where is another turn of the 

* In the Tribune (see Chap, viii) church looking at the tombs of 
was a drawing by Mr. Bentley, Abelard and Eloisa, and illustra- 
representing two lovers in a ting Pope's lines : — 

" If ever chance two wand'ring lovers brings 
To Paraclete's white walls and silver springs," etc. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 145 

river, and the suburbs of Kingston as luckily 
placed as Twickenham is on the left: and a 
natural terrace on the brow of my hill with 
meadows of my own down to the river, com- 
mands both extremities. Is not this a tolerable 
prospect ? You must figure that all this is per- 
petually enlivened by a navigation of boats and 
barges, and by a road below my terrace, with 
coaches, post-chaises, waggons and horsemen 
constantly in motion, and the fields speckled 
with cows, horses, and sheep. Now you shall 
walk into the house. The bow window below 
leads into a little parlour hung with a stone- 
colour Gothic paper and Jackson's Venetian 
prints,* which I could never endure while they 
pretended, infamous as they are, to be after 
Titian, etc., but when I gave them this air of 
barbarous bas-reliefs, they succeeded to a mira- 
cle : it is impossible at first sight not to conclude 
that they contain the history of Attila or Tottila 
done about the very sera. From hence, under 
two gloomy arches, you come to the hall and 
staircase, which it is impossible to describe to 



* The chiaroscuros of John Bap- turned to England, and was work- 
tist Jackson, published at Venice ing in a paperhanging manufac- 
in 1742. At this date he had re- tory at Batter sea. 



146 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

you, as it is the most particular and chief beauty 
of the castle. Imagine the walls covered with 
(I call it paper, but it is really paper painted in 
perspective to represent) Gothic fretwork : the 
lightest Gothic balustrade to the staircase, 
adorned with antelopes (our supporters) bear- 
ing shields; lean windows fattened with rich 
saints in painted glass, and a vestibule open 
with three arches on the landing place, and 
niches full of trophies of old coats of mail, 
Indian shields made of rhinoceros's hides, 
broadswords, quivers, long bows, arrows and 
spears — all supposed to be taken by Sir Terry 
Robsart [an ancestor of Sir Robert Walpole] 
in the holy wars. But as none of this regards 
the inclosed drawing, I will pass to that. The 
room on the ground floor nearest to you is a 
bedchamber, hung with yellow paper and prints, 
framed in a new manner invented by Lord Car- 
digan ; that is, with black and white borders 
printed. Over this is Mr. Chute's bedchamber, 
hung with red in the same manner. The bow 
window room one pair of stairs is not yet finished ; 
but in the tower beyond is the charming closet 
where I am now writing to you. It is hung 
with green paper and water-colour pictures; 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 147 

has two windows ; the one in the drawing looks 
to the garden, the other to the beautiful pros- 
pect; and the top of each glutted with the 
richest painted glass of the arms of England, 
crimson roses, and twenty other pieces of green, 
purple, and historic bits. I must tell you, by 
the way, that the castle, when finished, will 
have two-and-thirty windows enriched with 
painted glass. In this closet, which is Mr. 
Chute's College of Arms, are two presses of 
books of heraldry and antiquities, Madame 
Sevigne's Letters, and any French books that 
relate to her and her acquaintance. Out of this 
closet is the room where we always live, hung 
with a blue and white paper in stripes adorned 
with festoons, and a thousand plump chairs, 
couches, and luxurious settees covered with linen 
of the same pattern, and with a bow window com- 
manding the prospect, and gloomed with limes 
that shade half each window, already darkened 
with painted glass in chiaroscuro, set in deep 
blue glass. Under this room is a cool little 
hall, where we generally dine, hung with paper 
to imitate Dutch tiles. 

" I have described so much that you will be- 
gin to think that all the accounts I used to give 



148 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

you of the diminutiveness of our habitation were 
fabulous ; but it is really incredible how small 
most of the rooms are. The only two good 
chambers I shall have are not yet built; they 
will be an eating-room and a library, each 
twenty by thirty, and the latter fifteen feet 
high. For the rest of the house, I could send 
it to you in this letter as easily as the drawing, 
only that I should have no where to live until 
the return of the post. The Chinese summer- 
house, which you may distinguish in the distant 
landscape, belongs to my Lord Radnor.* We 
pique ourselves upon nothing but simplicity, 
and have no carvings, gildings, paintings, in- 
layings, or tawdry businesses." f 

From this it will appear that in June, 1753, 
the library and refectory were not yet built, so 
that when he says in the printed description 
that they were new built in 1753, he must mean 
no more than that they had been begun. In a 
later letter of May, 1754, they were still un- 

* Lord Radnor's whimsical a Jersey artist, for some time 
house on the river, which Wal- domiciled at Strawberry Hill. It 
pole nicknamed Mabland, came be- was in the garden of Radnor 
tween Strawberry Hill and Pope's House that Pope first met War- 
Villa, and is a conspicuous object burton. 

in old views of Twickenham, not- t Walpole to Mann, 12 June, 

ably in that, dated 1757, by Miintz> 1753- 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 149 

finished. Meanwhile the house is gradually 
attracting more and more attention. George 
Montagu comes and is " in raptures and screams, 
and hoops, and hollas, and dances, and crosses 
himself a thousand times over." The next vis- 
itor is " Nolkejumskoi " — otherwise the Duke 
of Cumberland, who inspects it much after the 
fashion of a gracious Gulliver surveying a castle 
in Lilliput. Afterwards, attracted by the reports 
of Lady Hervey and Mr. Bristow, arrives my 
Lord Bath, who is stirred into celebrating it to 
the tune of a song of Bubb Dodington on Mrs. 
Strawbridge, in stanzas of eight and six. His 
Lordship does not seem to have got further than 
two of these ; but Walpole, not to leave so com- 
plimentary a tribute in the depressed condition 
of a fragment, modestly revised and completed 
it himself. The lines may fairly find a place here 
as an example of his lighter muse. The first 
and third verses are Lord Bath's, the rest being 
obviously written in order to bring in "Nolke- 
jumskoi " and some personal friends : — 



" Some cry up Gunnersbury, 
For Sion some declare ; 
And some say that with Chiswick-house 
No villa can compare : 



/ 



150 Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 

But ask the beaux of Middlesex, 
Who know the country well, 

If Strawb'ry-hill, if Strawb'ry-hill 
Don't bear away the bell. 

" Some love to roll down Greenwich-hill 

For this thing and for that ; 
And some prefer sweet Marble-hill, 

Tho' sure 'tis somewhat fiat : 
Yet Marble-hill and Greenwich-hill 

If Kitty Clive can tell, 
From Strawb'ry-hill, from Strawb'ry-hill 

Will never bear the bell. 

" Tho' Surrey boasts its Oatlands, 

And Clermont kept so jim, 
And some prefer sweet Southcote's, 

Tis but a dainty whim : 
For ask the gallant Bristow, 

Who does in taste excell, 
If Strawb'ry-hill, if Strawb'ry-hill 

Don't bear away the bell. 

" Since Denham sung of Cooper's, 

There's scarce a hill around, 
But what in song or ditty 

Is turn'd to fairy-ground — 
Ah, peace be with their memories ! 

I wish them wond'rous well, 
But Strawb'ry-hill, but Strawb'ry-hill 

Must bear away the bell. 

" Great William dwells at Windsor, 
As Edward did of old, 
And many a Gaul and many a Scot 
Have found him full as bold. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 151 

On lofty hills like Windsor 

Such heroes ought to dwell 
Yet little folks like Strawb'ry-hill, 

Like Strawb'ry-hill as well. " * 

Cumberland Lodge, where, say the old guide- 
books, the hero of Culloden "reposed after vic- 
tory," still stands on the hill at the end of the 
Long Walk at Windsor; and at "Gunnersbury " 
lived the Princess Amelia. All the other houses 
referred to are in existence. "Sweet Marble- 
hill," which, like Strawberry, was but recently 
put up for sale, had at this date for mistress the 
Countess of Suffolk (Mrs. Howard), for whom 
it had been built by her royal lover, George 
II; and Chiswick-house (now the Marquis of 
Bute's), that famous structure of Kent's which 
Lord Hervey said was "too small to inhabit 
and too large to hang to one's watch chain," 
was the residence of Richard, Earl of Burling- 
ton. Claremont "kept so jim" [neat], was the 
seat of the Duke of Newcastle at Esher ; Oat- 
lands, near Weybridge, belonged to the Duke 
of York, and Sion House, on the Thames, to 
the Duke of Northumberland. Walpole and 
his friends, it will be perceived, did not shrink 

* The version here followed is that given in A Description of the Villa, 
etc., 1774, pp. 1 17-19. 



152 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

from comparing- small things with great. But 
perhaps the most notable circumstance about 
this glorification of Strawberry is that it should 
have originated with its reputed author. "Can 
there be," says Walpole, "an odder revolution 
of things, than that the printer of the Crafts- 
man should live in a house of mine, and that 
the author of the Craftsman should write a pan- 
egyric on a house of mine?" The printer was 
Richard Franklyn, already mentioned as his 
tenant ; and Lord Bath, if not the actual, was at 
least the putative, writer of most of the Crafts- 
mans attacks upon Sir Robert Walpole. It is 
possible, however, that, as with the poem, part 
only of this honour really belonged to him. 

Strawberry Hill and its improvements have, 
however, carried us far from the date at which 
this chapter begins, and we must return to 1 747. 
Happily the life of Walpole, though volumi- 
nously chronicled in his correspondence, is not 
so crowded with personal incident as to make a 
space of six years a serious matter to recover, 
especially when tested by the brief but still very 
detailed record in the Short Notes of what 
he held to be its conspicuous occurrences. In 
1 747-49 his zeal for his father's memory involved 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 153 

him in a good deal of party pamphleteering, 
and in 1749, he had what he styles "a remark- 
able quarrel " with the Speaker, of which one 
may say that, in these days, it would scarcely 
deserve its qualifying epithet, although it pro- 
duced more paper war. " These things (he says 
himself) were only excusable by the lengths to 
which party had been carried against my father ; 
or rather, were not excusable even then." For 
this reason it is needless to dwell upon them 
here, as well as upon certain other papers in 
The Remembrancer for 1 749, and a tract called 
Delenda est Oxonia, prompted by a heinous 
scheme, which was meditated by the Ministry, 
of attacking the liberties of that University by 
vesting in the Crown the nomination of the 
Chancellor. "This piece (he says), which I 
think one of my best, was seized at the print- 
er's and suppressed." Then in November, 1749, 
comes something like a really "moving inci- 
dent," — he is robbed in Hyde Park. He was 
returning by moonlight to Arlington Street from 
Lord Holland's when his coach was stopped by 
two of the most notorious of " Diana's forest- 
ers," Plunket and James M'Lean, and the 
adventure had all but a tragic termination. 



154 Horace Walpotc : A Memoir. 

M'Lean's pistol went off by accident, sending a 
bullet so nearly through Waipole's head that it 
grazed the skin under his eye, stunned him 
and passed through the roof of the chariot. 
His correspondence contains no more than a 
passing reference to this narrow escape, proba- 
ably because it was amply reported (and ex- 
panded) in the public prints. But in a paper 
which he contributed to the World a year or 
two later, under guise of relating what had hap- 
pened to one of his acquaintance, he reverts to 
this experience. "The whole affair (he says) 
was conducted with the greatest good-breeding 
on both sides. The robber, who had only taken 
a purse this way, because he had that morning 
been disappointed of marrying a great fortune, 
no sooner returned to his lodgings, than he sent 
the gentleman [i. e., Walpole himself] two let- 
ters of excuses, which, with less wit than the 
epistles of Voiture, had ten times more natural 
and easy politeness in their turn of expression. 
In the postscript he appointed a meeting at Ty- 
burn at twelve at night, where the gentleman 
might purchase again any trifles he had lost; 
and my friend has been blamed for not accept- 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 155 

ingf the rendezvous, as it seemed liable to be con- 
strued by ill-natured people into a doubt of the 
honour of a man, who had given him all the 
satisfaction in his power, for having unluckily 
been near shooting him through the head." * 

The "fashionable highwayman" (as Mr. 
M'Lean was called) was taken soon afterwards 
and hanged. "I am honourably mentioned in a 
Grub-street ballad (says Walpole) for not hav- 
ing contributed to his sentence," and he goes on 
to say that there are as many prints and pam- 
phlets about him as about that other sensation of 
1 750, the earthquake. M'Lean seems neverthe- 
less to have been rather a pinchbeck Macheath; 
but for the moment, in default of larger lions, 
he was the rage. Several thousand people vis- 
ited him after his condemnation in his cell at 
Newgate, where he is said to have fainted twice 
from the heat and pressure of the crowd. And 
his visitors were not all men. In a note to his 
Modern Fine Lady, Soame Jenyns says that 
some of the brightest eyes were in tears for 
him, and Walpole himself tells us that he ex- 
cited the warmest commiseration in two of his 

* World, 19 Dec, 1754. {Works, 1798, i, 177-8.) 



156 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

own friends, Lady Caroline Petersham and Miss 
Ashe.* 

Miss Ashe, of whom we are told mysteriously 
by the commentators that she " was said to have 
been of very high parentage," and Lady Caro- 
line Petersham, a daughter of the Duke of Graf- 
ton, figure more pleasantly in another letter of 
Walpole, which gives a glimpse of some of those 
diversions with which he was wont to relieve the 
gothicising of his villa by the Thames. He re- 
lates it, he tells Montagu, in a phrase which 
proves how well he understood his own quali- 
ties, to show "the manners of the age, which 
are always as entertaining to a person fifty 
miles off as to one born an hundred and fifty 
years after the times." We have not yet reached 
the later limit; but there is little doubt as to 
the interest of Walpole's account of his visit 
in the month of June, 1 750, to the famous gar- 
dens of Mr. Jonathan Tyers. He got a card, he 
says, from Lady Caroline to go with her to Vaux- 
hall. He repairs accordingly to her house, and 

* Another instance of M'Lean's Gray's Long Story, which was 
momentary vogue is given by written at the very time he was 
Cunningham. He is hitched into taken: — 

" A sudden fit of ague shook him 
He stood as mute as poor M'Lean. " 



Horace Walpole : A Alcmoir. 157 

finds her " and the little Ashe, or the Pollard 
Ashe, as they call her," having "just finished 
their last layer of red and looking as handsome 
as crimson can make them." Others of the 
party are the Duke of Kingston, who had 
to wife the notorious Miss Chudleigh ; Lord 
March of Thackeray's Virginians; Harry Vane, 
soon to be Earl of Darlington ; Mr. Whitened ; 
a "pretty Miss Beauclerc," and a "foolish Miss 
Sparre." As they sail up the Mall they en- 
counter cross-grained Lord Petersham (my 
lady's husband) shambling along after his 
wont,* and "as sulky as a ghost that nobody 
will speak to first." He declines to accompany 
his wife and her friends, who, getting into the 
best order they can, march to their barge, which 
has a boat of French horns attending, and little 
Ashe sings. After parading up and down the 
river, they "debark" at Vauxhall, where at the 
outset they narrowly escape the excitement of a 
duel. For a certain Mrs. Lloyd of Spring Gar- 
dens, afterwards married to Lord Haddington, 
seeing Miss Beauclerc and her companion fol- 
lowing Lady Petersham, says audibly, "Poor 

* He was popularly known as "Peter Shamble." He afterwards 
became Earl of Harrington. 



158 Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 

girls, I am sorry to see them in such bad com- 
pany," a remark which "the foolish Miss Sparre" 
(she is but fifteen) for the fun of seeing a duel, 
endeavours to make Lord March resent. But 
my Lord, who is not only "very lively and 
agreeable," but also of a nice discretion, laughs 
her out of " this charming frolic with a great 
deal of humour." Next they pick up Lord 
Granby, arriving very drunk from "Jenny's 
Whim " at Chelsea, where he has left a mixed 
gathering of thirteen persons of quality playing 
at Brag. He is in the sentimental stage of his 
malady, and makes love to Miss Beauclerc and 
Miss Sparre alternately until the tide of cham- 
pagne turns, and he remembers that he is mar- 
ried. " At last," says Walpole, and at this point 
the story may be surrendered to him entirely — 
" we assembled in our booth, Lady Caroline in 
the front, with the vizor of her hat erect, and 
looking gloriously jolly and handsome. She 
had fetched my brother Orford from the next 
box, where he was enjoying himself with his 
petite partie, to help us to mince chickens. We 
minced seven chickens into a china dish, which 
Lady Caroline stewed over a lamp with three 
pats of butter and a flagon of water, stirring, 



Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 159 

and rattling and laughing, and we every minute 
expecting to have the dish fly about our ears. 
She had brought Betty, the fruit girl,* with 
hampers of strawberries and cherries from 
Rogers's, and made her wait upon us, and 
then made her sup by us at a little table. 
The conversation was no less lively than the 
whole transaction. There was a Mr. O'Brien 
arrived from Ireland, who would get the Duch- 
ess of Manchester from Mr. Hussey, if she were 
still at liberty. I took up the biggest hautboy 
in the dish, and said to Lady Caroline, ' Madam, 
Miss Ashe desires you would eat this O'Brien 
strawberry '; she replied immediately, ' I won't, 
you hussey.' You may imagine the laugh this 
reply occasioned. After the tempest was a lit- 
tle calmed, the Pollard said, ' Now, how anybody 
would spoil this story that was to repeat it, and 
say, I won't, you jade.' In short the whole air 
of our party was sufficient, as you will easily 
imagine, to take up the whole attention of the 
garden ; so much so, that from eleven o'clock till 
half an hour after one we had the whole con- 

* Betty Neale, here referred lo, survived until 1797, when her 
was a well-known character in St. death, at the age of 67, is re- 
James's Street, where, for many corded in the Gentleman'' s Maga- 
years, she kept a fruit shop. She zine. 



160 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

course round our booth : at last, they came into 
the little gardens of each booth on the sides of 
our's, till Harry Vane took up a bumper, and 
drank their healths and was proceeding to treat 
them with still greater freedom. It was three 
o'clock before we got home." He adds a char- 
acteristic touch to explain Lord Granby's eccen- 
tricities. He had lost eight hundred pounds to 
the Prince of Wales at Kew the night before, 
and this had "a little ruffled" His Lordship's 
temper. * 

Early in 1 753, Edward Moore, the author of 
some Fables for the Female Sex, once popular 
enough to figure, between Thomson and Prior, 
in Goldsmith's Beauties of English Poesy, es- 
tablished the periodical paper called The World, 
which to quote a latter-day definition, might 
fairly claim to be "written by gentlemen for 
gentlemen." Soame Jenyns, Walpole's Twick- 
enham neighbour, Cambridge of the Scribler- 
iad ; Hamilton Boyle, Sir Charles Hanbury 
Williams, and Lord Chesterfield were all con- 
tributors. That Walpole should also attempt 
this "bow of Ulysses, in which it was the fash- 
ion for men of rank and genius to try their 

* Walpole to Montagu, 23 June, 1750. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 161 

strength," goes without saying. His gifts were 
exactly suited to the work, and his contribu- 
tions to Moore's pages are by no means its 
worst. His first essay was a bright little piece 
of persiflage upon what he calls the return of 
nature, and proceeds to illustrate by the intro- 
duction of "real water" on the stage, by Kent's 
landscape gardening, and by the fauna and 
flora of the dessert table. A second paper was 
devoted to that extraordinary adventurer, Baron 
Neuhoff, otherwise Theodore, King of Corsica, 
who, with his realm for his only assets, was at 
this time a tenant of the King's Bench prison. 
Walpole, with genuine kindness, proposed a 
subscription for this bankrupt Belisarius, and a 
sum of fifty pounds was collected. This, how- 
ever, proved so much below the expectations 
of His Corsican Majesty, that he actually had 
the effrontery to threaten Dodsley, the printer 
of the paper, with a prosecution for using his 
name unjustifiably. " I have done with coun- 
tenancing Kings," wrote Walpole to Mann.* 

* Nevertheless, when this "Roi en ExiV shortly afterwards died, 
Walpole erected a stone in St. Ann's Church, Soho, to his memory, with 
the following inscription : 

" Near this place is interred 
Theodore, King of Corsica ; 
Who died in this parish, Dec. II, 1756, 



1 62 Horace Walpole : A Memoir, 

Others of his World papers are on the Glas- 
tonbury Thorn; on Letter- Writing, a subject of 
which he might claim to speak with authority ; 
on old women as objects of passion, and on 
politeness, wherein occurs the already quoted 
anecdote of M'Lean the highwayman. The 
light hand and lighter humour made him an 
almost ideal contributor to Moore's pages, and 
it is not surprising to find that such judges 
as Lady Mary approved his performances, or 
that he himself regarded them with a compla- 
cency which peeps out now and again in his 
letters. " I met Mrs. Clive two nights ago," 
he says, "and told her I had been in the mead- 
ows, but would walk no more there, for there 
was all the world. 'Well,' says she, 'and don't 
you like the World? I hear it was very clever 
last Thursday.'" "Last Thursday" had ap- 
peared Walpole's paper on elderly "flames." 

Immediately after leaving the Kings's-Bench-Prison 

By the benefit of the Act of Insolvency ; 

In consequence of which he registered 

His Kingdom of Corsica 

For the use of his Creditors. 

"The Grave, great teacher, to a level brings, 
Heroes and beggars, galley-slaves and Kings. 
But Theodore this moral learn'd, ere dead ; 
Fate pour'd its lessons on his living head, 
Bestow'd a kingdom, and denied him bread." 



Horace Walpolc: A Memoir. 163 

During the period covered by this chapter 
the redintegratio amoris with Gray, to which 
reference has been made, became confirmed. 
Whether the attachment was ever quite on the 
old basis, may be doubted. Gray always poses a 
little as the aggrieved person who could not speak 
first, and to whom unmistakable overtures must 
be made by the other side. He as yet " neither 
repents nor rejoices over much, but is pleased" — 
he tells Chute in 1 750. On the other hand, Wal- 
pole, though he appears to have proffered his 
palm branch with very genuine geniality and de- 
sire to let by-gones be by-gones, was not above 
very candid criticism of his recovered friend. " I 
agree with you most absolutely in your opinion 
about Gray, "he writes to Montagu in September, 
1748 ; " he is the worst company in the world. 
From a melancholy turn, from living reclusely, 
and from a little too much dignity, he never con- 
verses easily ; all his words are measured and 
chosen, and formed into sentences ; his writings 
are admirable ; he himself is not agreeable." 
Meantime, however, the revived connection went 
on pleasantly. Gray made flying visits to 
Strawberry and Arlington Street, and prattled 
to Walpole from Pembroke between whiles. 



164 Horace Walpolc: A Memoir. 

And certainly, in a measure, it is to Walpole 
that we owe Gray. It was Walpole who in- 
duced Gray to allow Dodsley to print in 1747, 
as an attenuated folio pamphlet, the Ode on a 
Distant Prospect of Eton College; and it was the 
tragic end of one of Walpole's favourite cats in 
a china bowl of gold-fish (of which by the way 
there was a large pond called Po-yang at Straw- 
berry) which prompted the delightful occasional 
verses by Gray beginning : — 

" ' Twas on a lofty vase's side, 
Where China's gayest art had dy'd 

The azure flow'rs, that blow ; 
Demurest of the tabby kind, 
The pensive Selima reclin'd, 

Gaz'd on the lake below," — 

a stanza which, with a trifling alteration of 
tenses, long served as a label for the "lofty vase" 
in the Strawberry Hill collection. To Wal- 
pole's officious circulation of the famous Elegy 
written in a Country Church Yard in manuscript 
must indirectly be attributed its publication by 
Dodsley in February, 1 75 1, as well as the com- 
position of that typical piece of vers de societe, 
the Long Story, which originated in the interest 
in the recluse poet of Stoke Poges with which 



Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 165 

Walpole's well-meaning (if unwelcome) advo- 
cacy had inspired Lady Cobham and some other 
lion-hunters of the neighbourhood. But his chief 
enterprise in connection with his friend's produc- 
tions was the edition of them put forth in March, 
1 753, with illustrations by Richard Bentley, the 
youngest child of the famous Master of Trinity. 
Bentley possessed considerable attainments as 
an amateur artist, and as a scholar and connois- 
seur had just that virtuoso finesse of manner 
which was most attractive to Walpole, whose 
guest and counsellor he frequently became 
during the progress of the Strawberry improve- 
ments. Out of this connection which, in its hot 
fits, was of the most confidential character, grew 
the suggestion that Bentley should make, at 
Walpole's expense, a series of designs for Gray's 
poems. These, which are still in existence,* 
were engraved with great delicacy by two of 
the best engravers of that time, Miiller and 
Charles Grignion ; and the Poemata-Grayo- 
Bentleiana y as Walpole christened them, became 
and remains one of the most remarkable of 

* A copy of the poems, " illus- sketch of Stoke House, from which 

trated with the original designs of Mr. Bentley made his finished pen 

Mr. Richard Bentley, . . . and drawing," was sold at the Straw- 

also with Mr. Gray's original berry Hill sale of 1842 for £8 8s. 



1 66 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

the illustrated books of the last century. Gray, 
as may be imagined, could scarcely oppose the 
compliment ; and he seems to have interested 
himself minutely in its accomplishment, reward- 
ing the artist by some commendatory verses, 
in which, he certainly does not deny himself, to 
use a phrase of Mr. Swinburne, "the noble 
pleasure of praising."* But even over this 
book the sensitive ligament that linked him to 
Walpole was perilously strained. Without con- 
sulting him, Walpole had his portrait engraved 
as a frontispiece, a step which instantly drew 
from Gray a wail of nervous expostulation so 
unmistakably heartfelt that it was impossible to 
proceed with the plate. Thus it came about that 
Designs by Mr. R. Bentley for Six Poems by 
Mr. T. Gray made its appearance without the 
portrait of the poet. 

Bentley's ingenious son was not the only 
person whom the decoration of Strawberry 
pressed into the service of its owner. Selwyn, 
the wit, George James (or "Gilly") Williams, a 

* The verses include this magnificent stanza: — 
" But not to one in this benighted age 
Is that diviner inspiration giv'n, 
That burns in Shakespeare's or in Milton's page, 
The pomp and prodigality of heaven." 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 167 

connoisseur of considerable ability, and Richard 
Lord Edgcumbe occasionally sat as a committee 
of taste, a function commemorated by Reynolds 
in a conversation piece which afterwards formed 
one of the chief ornaments of the Refectory; and 
upon Bentley's recommendation Walpole invited 
from Jersey a humbler guest in the person of a 
German artist named Miintz — "an inoffensive, 
good creature, who would rather ponder over a 
foreign gazette than a palette," but whose ser- 
vices kept him domiciled for some time at the 
Gothic castle. Miintz executed many views of 
the neighbourhood, which are still, like that 
of Twickenham already referred to, preserved 
in contemporary engravings. And besides the 
persons whom Walpole drew into his immediate 
circle, the "village," as he called it, was grow- 
ing steadily in public favour. "Mr. Miintz" — 
writes Walpole in July, 1755 — "says we have 
more coaches than there are in half France. 
Mrs. Pritchard has bought Ragman's Castle, 
for which my Lord Litchfield could not agree. 
We shall be as celebrated as Baise or Tivoli; 
and if we have not as sonorous names as they 
boast, we have very famous people : Clive and 
Pritchard, actresses; Scott and Hudson, paint- 



1 68 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

ers ; my Lady Suffolk, famous in her time ; Mr. 
H[ickey] the impudent lawyer that Tom Hervey 
wrote against; Whitehead, the poet, and Cam- 
bridge the everything." Cambridge has already 
been referred to as a contributor to the World, 
and the Whitehead was the one mentioned in 
Churchill's stinging couplet: — 

" May I (can worse disgrace on manhood fall ?) 
Be born a Whitehead, and baptised a Paul," — 

who then lived on Twickenham Common. Scott 
was Samuel Scott the " English Canaletti " and 
one of the heroes of Hogarth's "Five Days' 
Tour"; Hudson, Sir Joshua's master, who had 
a house on the river next Lord Radnor's. But 
Walpole's best allies were two of the other sex. 
One was Lady Suffolk, the whilom friend (as 
Mrs. Howard) of Pope and Swift and Gay, 
whose home at Marble Hill is celebrated in the 
Walpole-cum-Pulteney poem; the other was 
red-faced Mrs. Clive, who occupied a house 
known familiarly as " Clive-den " and officially 
as Little Strawberry. She had not yet retired 
from the stage. Lady Suffolk's stories of the 
Georgian Court and its scandals, and Mrs. 
Clive's anecdotes of the greenroom, and of 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 169 

their common neighbour at Hampton, the great 
"Roscius" himself (with whom she was always 
at war), must have furnished Walpole with an 
inexhaustible supply of just the particular de- 
scription of gossip which he most appreciated. 






r \ 








W^-f^ 




..oip^'ii 


■; 


JSK 




CHAPTER VI. 

Gleanings from the "Short Notes" ; "Letter from Xo Ho" ; 
the Strawberry Hill Press j Robinson the Printer ; Grafs 
" Odes" j other works j " Catalogue of Royal and Noble 
Authors " ; "Anecdotes of Painting " ; humours of the Press; 
"The Parish Register of Twickenham"; Lady Fanny 
Shirley, Fielding ; " The Castle of Otranto." 




VI. 



IN order to take up the little-variegated 
thread of Walpole's life, we must again re- 
sort to the Short Notes, in which, as already 
stated, he has recorded what he considered to be 
its most important occurrences. In 1 754, he had 
been chosen member, in the new Parliament of 
that year, for Castle Rising in Norfolk. In 
March, 1 755, he says, he was very ill-used by his 
nephew Lord Orford [i. e., the son of his eldest 

brother Robert] upon a contested election in 
12* 173 



174 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

the House of Commons, "on which I wrote him 
a long letter, with an account of my own con- 
duct in politics." This letter does not seem 
to have been preserved, and it is difficult to 
conceive that its theme could have involved 
very lengthy explanations. In February, 1757, 
he vacated his Castle Rising seat for that of 
Lynn, and about the same time, he tells us, 
used his best endeavours, although in vain, to 
save the unfortunate Admiral Byng, who was 
executed pour encourager les autres in the follow- 
ing March. But with the exception of his erec- 
tion of a tablet to Theodore of Corsica, and the 
dismissal in 1759 of Mr. Muntz, with whom his 
connection seems to have been exceptionally 
prolonged, his record for the next decade, or 
until the publication of the Castle of Otranto, 
is almost exclusively literary, and deals with the 
establishment of his private printing press at 
Strawberry Hill, his publication thereat of Gray's 
Odes and other works, his Catalogue of Royal 
and Noble A uthors, his A necdotes of Painting and 
his above-mentioned romance. This accidental 
absorption of his chronicle by literary produc- 
tion will serve as a sufficient reason for devot- 
ing this chapter to those efforts of his pen 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 175 

which, from the outset, were destined to the per- 
manence of type. 

Already, as far back as March, 1 75 1, he had 
begun the work afterwards known as the Me- 
moires of the last Ten Yea7's of the Reign of 
George II, to the progress of which there are 
scattered references in the Short Notes. He 
had intended at first to confine them to the his- 
tory of one year, but they grew under his hand. 
His first definite literary effort in 1757, however, 
was the clever little squib, after the model of 
Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes, entitled A Let- 
ter fi'-om Xo Ho, a Chinese Philosopher at Lon- 
don, to his friend Lien Chi, at Peking, in which 
he ingeniously satirises the "late political revo- 
tions" and the inconstant disposition of the 
English nation, not forgetting to fire off a few 
sarcasms a-propos of the Byng tragedy. The 
piece, he tells Mann, was written "in an hour 
and a half" (there is always a little of Oronte's 
Je nai demeure qu'un quart d'heure a le faire 
about Walpole's literary efforts), was sent to 
press next day, and ran through five editions 
in a fortnight* Mrs. Clive was of opinion 

* It may be observed that when Review, where at this very date 
Walpole's letter was published, it Oliver Goldsmith was worling as 
was briefly noticed in the Monthly the hind of Griffiths and his wife. 



176 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

that the rash satirist would be sent to the 
Tower, but he himself regarded it as " perhaps 
the only political paper ever written, in which 
no man of any party could dislike or deny a 
single fact"; and Henry Fox, to whom he sent 
a copy, may be held to confirm this view, since 
his only objection seems to have been that it did 
not hit some of the other side a little harder. It 
would be difficult now without long notes to 
make it intelligible to modern readers, but the 
ensuing outburst of the Chinese philosopher re- 
specting the mutabilities of the English climate 
has the merit of enduring applicability. "The 
English have no sun, no summer as we have, at 
least their sun does not scorch like ours. They 
content themselves with names : at a certain 
time of the year they leave their capital, and 
that makes summer ; they go out of the city, 
and that makes the country. Their monarch, 
when he goes into the country, passes in his 
calash* by a row of high trees, goes along a 

It is also notable that the name of it be possible that Walpole supplied 
Xo Ho's correspondent, Lien Chi, Goldsmith with his first idea of the 
seems almost a foreshadowing of Citizen of the World? 
Goldsmith's Lien Chi Altangi. Can 

* A four-wheeled carriage with a movable hood. Ep. Prior's Down 
Hall : — " Then answer'd Squire Morley ; Pray get a calash, That in 
summer may burn, and in winter may splash," etc. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 177 

gravel walk, crosses one of the chief streets, is 
driven by the side of a canal between two rows 
of lamps, at the end of which he has a small 
house, and then he is supposed to be in the 
country. I saw this ceremony yesterday: as 
soon as he was gone the men put on under vest- 
ments of white linen, and the women left off 
those vast draperies, which they call hoops, and 
which I have described to thee; and then all 
the men and all the women said it was hot. If 
thou wilt believe me I am now [in May] writing 
to thee before a fire." * 

In the following June Walpole had betaken 
himself to the place he " loved best of all," and 
was amusing himself at Strawberry with his 
pen. The next work which he records is the 
publication of a Catalogue of the Collection of 
Pictures of [i. e., belonging to] Charles the First, 
for which he prepared "a little introduction." 
This, and the subsequent "prefaces or advertise- 
ments" to the Catalogues of the Collections of 
James the Second, and the Duke of Bucking- 
ham, are to be found in Vol. i of his works. But 
the great event of 1757 is the establishment of 
the Officina A rbuteana or private printing press 

* Works, 1798, i, 208. 



1 78 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

of Strawberry Hill. "Elzevir, Aldus, and Ste- 
phens," he tells Chute in July, "are the freshest 
personages in his memory," and he jestingly 
threatens to assume as his motto (with a slight 
variation) Pope's couplet : 

" Some have at first for wits, then poets pass'd ; 
Turn' & printers next, and proved plain fools at last." 

" I am turned printer," he writes somewhat 
later, "and have converted a little cottage here 
into a printing-office. My abbey is a perfect 
college or academy. I keep a painter [Muntz] 
in the house, and a printer — not to mention 
Mr. Bentley, who is an academy himself." Wil- 
liam Robinson, the printer, an Irishman with 
noticeable eyes which Garrick envied ("they are 
more Richard the Third's than Garrick's own," 
says Walpole), must have been a rather original 
personage, to judge by a copy of one of his 
letters which his patron encloses to Mann. He 
says he found it in a drawer where it had evi- 
dently been placed to attract his attention. After 
telling his correspondent in bad blank verse 
that he dates from the "shady bowers, nodding 
groves and amaranthine shades (?)" of Twicken- 
ham — "Richmond's near neighbour, where great 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 1 79 

George the King resides " — Robinson proceeds 
to describe his employer as "the Hon. Horatio 
Walpole, son to the late great Sir Robert Wal- 
pole, who is very studious, and an admirer of all 
the liberal arts and sciences ; amongst the rest he 
admires printing. He has fitted out a complete 
printing-house at this his country seat, and has 
done me the favour to make me sole manager 
and operator (there being no one but myself). 
All men of genius resorts his house, courts his 
company and admires his understanding — what 
with his own and their writings, I believe I shall 
be pretty well employed. I have pleased him, 
and I hope to continue so to do." Then after a 
reference to the extreme heat — a heat by which 
fowls and quarters of lamb have been roasted in 
the London Artillery grounds "by the help of 
glasses" — so capricious was the climate over 
which Walpole had made merry in May, — he 
proceeds to describe Strawberry. "The place 
I am now in is all my comfort from the heat — 
the situation of it is close to the Thames, and 
is Richmond Gardens (if you were ever in them) 
in miniature, surrounded by bowers, groves, cas- 
cades and ponds, and on a rising ground not 
very common in this part of the country — the 



180 Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 

building elegant, and the furniture of a peculiar 
taste, magnificent and superb." At this date 
poor Robinson seems to have been delighted 
with the place, and the fastidious master whom 
he hoped "to continue to please." But Wal- 
pole was nothing if not mutable, and two years 
later he had found out that Robinson of the re- 
markable eyes was " a foolish Irishman, who 
took himself for a genius," and they parted, with 
the result that the Officina Arbuteana was tem- 
porarily at a standstill. 

For the moment, however, things went 
smoothly enough. It had been intended that 
the maiden effort of the Strawberry types should 
have been a translation by Bentley of Paul 
Hentzner's curious account of England in 1598. 
But Walpole suddenly became aware that Gray 
had put the penultimate, if not the final, touches 
to his painfully-elaborated Pindaric Odes, the 
Bard and the Progress of Poesy, and he pounced 
upon them forthwith — Gray as usual, half ex- 
postulating, half overborne. " You will dislike 
this as much as I do" — he writes to Mason — 
"but there is no help." "You understand," he 
adds, with the air of one resigning himself to 
the inevitable, " it is he that prints them, not for 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 181 

me, but for Dodsley." However, he persisted in 
refusing Walpole's not entirely unreasonable 
request for notes. " If a thing cannot be under- 
stood without them," he said characteristically, 
"it had better not be understood at all." Con- 
sequently, while describing them as " Greek, 
Pindaric, sublime," Walpole confesses under his 
breath that they are a little obscure. Dodsley 
paid Gray forty guineas for the book, which 
was a large, thin quarto entitled Odes by Mr. 
Gray ; Printed at Strawberry Hill for R. and 
J. Dodsley in Pall Mall. It was published 
in August, and the price was a shilling. On 
the title-page was a dusky vignette of the 
Gothic castle at Twickenham. From a letter 
of Walpole to Lyttelton it would seem that his 
apprehensions as to the poems being "under- 
standed ol the people" proved well-founded. 
" They [the age] have cast their eyes over them, 
found them obscure, and looked no further, yet 
perhaps no compositions ever had more sublime 
beauties than are in each," — and he goes on to 
criticise them minutely in a fashion which shows 
that his own appreciation of them was by no 
means unqualified. But Warburton, and Gar- 
rick, and the "word-picker" Hurd were enthusi- 



1 82 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

astic. Lyttelton and Shenstone followed more 
moderately. Upon the whole, the success of 
the first venture was encouraging, and the 
share in it of " Elzevir Horace," as Conway 
called his friend, was not forgotten. 

Gray's Odes were succeeded by Hentzner's 
Travels, or, to speak more accurately, by that 
portion of Hentzner's Travels which refers to 
England. In England Hentznerwaslittleknown, 
and the 220 copies which Walpole printed in 
October, 1757, were prefaced by an Advertise- 
ment from his pen and a dedication to the So- 
ciety of Antiquaries, of which he was a member. 
After this came, in 1758, his Catalogue of 
Royal and Noble Authors ; a collection of Fu- 
gitive Pieces (which included his essays in the 
World), dedicated to Conway ;* and seven hun- 
dred copies of Lord Whit worth's Account of 
Russia. Then followed a book by Joseph 
Spence, the Parallel of Magliabecchi and Mr. 
[Robert] Hill, a learned tailor of Buckingham, 
the object of which was to benefit Hill, an end 
which must have been attained, as six out of seven 



* These, though printed in 1758, printed at the Strawberry Hill 
were not circulated until 1759. Press," which contains full details 
See, at end, — " Appendix of Books of all these publications. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 183 

hundred copies were sold in a fortnight, and 
the book was reprinted in London. Bentley's 
Lucan, a quarto of 500 copies, succeeded Spence, 
and then came three other quartos of Anecdotes 
of Painting by Walpole himself. The only 
other notable products of the press during this 
period are the Autobiography of Lord Her- 
bert of Cherbury, 4 t0 , 1764, and 100 copies 
of the Poems of Lady Temple. This, however, 
is a very fair record for seven years' work, when 
it is remembered that the Strawberry Hill staff 
never exceeded a man and a boy. As already 
stated, the first printer, Robinson, was dismissed 
in 1759. His place, after a short interval of*' oc- 
casional hands," was taken by Thomas Kirgate, 
whose name thenceforth appears on all the 
Twickenham issues, with which it is indissolubly 
connected. Kirgate continued, with greater 
good fortune than his predecessors, to perform 
his duties until Walpole's death. 

In the above list there are two books which, 
in these pages, deserve a more extended notice 
than the rest. The Catalogue of Royal and 
Noble Authors had at least the merit of novelty, 
and certainly a better reason for its existence 
than some of the works to which its author re- 



184 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

fers in his preface. Even the works of Pulteney, 
Earl of Bath, and the English rondeaus of 
Charles of Orleans are more worthy of a 
chronicler than the lives of physicians who 
had been poets, of men who had died laughing, 
or of Frenchmen who had studied Hebrew. 
Walpole took considerable pains in obtaining 
information, and his book was exceedingly 
well received — indeed, far more favourably 
than he had any reason to expect. A second 
edition, which was not printed at Strawberry 
Hill, speedily followed the first, with no diminu- 
tion of its prosperity. For a book which made 
no pretensions to symmetry, which is often 
meagre where it might have been expected 
to be full, and is every where prejudiced by a 
sort of fine-gentleman disdain of exactitude — 
this was certainly as much as he could antici- 
pate. But he seems to have been more than 
usually sensitive to criticism, and some of the 
amplest of his Short Notes are devoted to 
the discussion of the adverse opinions which 
were expressed. From these we learn that he 
was abused by the Critical Review for disliking 
the Stuarts, and by the Monthly for liking his 
father. Further, that he found an apologist in 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 185 

Dr. Hill (of the Inspector) whose gross adula- 
tion was worse than abuse ; and lastly, that he 
was seriously attacked in a Pamphlet of Re- 
marks on Mr. Walpole s " Catalogue of Royal 
and Noble Authors" by a certain Carter, con- 
cerning whose antecedents his irritation goes 
on to bring together all the scandals he can 
collect. As the Short Notes were written 
long after the events, it shows how his soreness 
against his critics continued. What it was when 
still fresh may be gathered from the following 
quotation from a letter to the Rev d . Henry 
Zouch, to whom he was indebted for many new 
facts and corrections, especially in the second 
edition, and who afterwards helped him in the 
Anecdotes of Painting : — "I am sick of the 
character of author ; I am sick of the conse- 
quences of it ; I am weary of seeing my name in 
the newspapers ; I am tired with reading foolish 
criticisms on me, and as foolish defences of me ; 
and I trust my friends will be so good as to let 
the last abuse of me pass unanswered. It is 
called " Remarks " on my Catalogue, asperses 
the Revolution more than it does my book, and, 
in one word, is written by a nonjuring preacher, 
who was a dog-doctor. Of me, he knows so 
13 



1 86 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

little that he thinks to punish me by abusing 
King William!"* 

In a letter of a few months earlier to the same 
correspondent, he refers to another work upon 
which, in despite of the sentence just quoted, he 
continued to employ himself. " Last summer," 
— he says, — " I bought of Vertue's widow forty 
volumes of his MS. collections relating to Eng- 
lish painters, sculptors, gravers and architects. 
He had actually begun their lives: unluckily he 
had not gone far, and could not write grammar. 
I propose to digest and complete this work." f 
The purchases referred to had been made sub- 
sequent to the engraver's death in 1756, when 
his widow applied to Walpole, as a connoisseur, 
to become the purchaser of her husband's volu- 
minous notes and memoranda with respect to 
art and artists in England. He also acquired at 
Vertue's sale in May, 1757, a number of copies 
from Holbein and two or three other pictures. 
He seems to have almost immediately set about 
arranging and digesting this unwieldy and cha- 
aotic heap of material, { much of which besides 

* Walpole to Zouch, 14 May, \ " Mr. Vertue's Manuscripts, 

1 759. in 28 vols " — were sold at the Sale 

t Walpole to Zouch, 12 January, of Rare Prints and Illustrated 

1759* Works from the Strawberry Hill 



Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 187 

being illiterate, was also illegible. More than 
once his patience gave way under the drudgery ; 
but he nevertheless persevered in a way that 
shows a tenacity of purpose foreign in this case 
at all events to his assumption of dilettante indif- 
ference. His progress is thus chronicled. He 
began in January, 1760, and finished the first 
volume on 14 August. The second volume was 
begun in September and completed on the 23rd 
October. On the 4th January in the following 
year he set about the third volume, but laid it 
aside after the first day, not resuming it until the 
end of June. In August, however, he finished it. 
Two volumes were published in 1762, and a 
third, which is dated 1763, in 1764. As usual, 
he affected more or less to undervalue his own 
share in the work ; but he very justly laid stress 
in his " Preface " upon the fact that he was little 
more than the arranger of data not collected by 
his own exertions. " I would not," he said to 
Zouch, "have the materials of forty years, which 
was Vertue's case, depreciated in compliment to 
the work of four months, which is almost my 
whole merit." Here, again, the tone is a little 

Collection on Tuesday, 21 June, in the Short Notes that he paid 
1842, for ^26 10s. Walpole says .£100. 



1 88 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

in the Oronte manner; but, upon the main point, 
the interest of the work, his friends did not 
share his apprehensions, and Gray especially 
was " violent about it." Nor did the public show 
themselves less appreciative, for there was so 
much that was new in the dead engraver's 
memoranda, and so much which was the result 
of visits to private galleries and obscure sources, 
that the work could scarcely have failed of 
readers even if the style had been hopelessly 
corrupt, which, under Walpole's revision, it cer- 
tainly was not. In 1762, he began a Catalogue 
of Engravers, which he finished in about six 
weeks as a supplementary volume, and in 1765, 
still from the Strawberry Press, he issued a sec- 
ond edition of the whole.* 

After the appearance of the second edition 
of the Anecdotes of Painting, a silence fell upon 
the Officina Arbuteana for three years, during 
the earlier part of which time Walpole was at 
Paris, as will be narrated in the next chapter. 
His press, as may be guessed, was one of the 
sights of his Gothic castle, and there are 

* The Anecdotes of Painting was Ralph N. Wornum in 1839. This 

enlarged by the Rev d . James last in three volumes, 8vo, is the 

Dallaway in 1826-8, and again re- accepted edition, 
vised, with additional notes, by 



Horace Walpole : A Meinoir. 189 

several anecdotes showing how his ingenious 
fancy made it the vehicle of adroit compliment. 
Once, not long after it had been established, 
my Lady Rochford, Lady Townshend (the witty 
Ethelreda or Audrey Harrison),* and Sir John 
Bland's sister were carried after dinner into the 
printing room to see Mr. Robinson at work. 
He immediately struck off some verse which was 
already set up in type, and presented it to Lady 
Townshend : — 

THE PRESS SPEAKS. 

From me wits and poets their glory obtain ; 
Without me their wit and their verses were vain. 
Stop, Townshend, and let me but paint t what you say ; 
You, the fame I on others bestow, will repay. 

His visitors then asked, as he had anticipated, 
to see the actual process of setting up the type, 
and Walpole ostensibly gave the printer four 
lines out of The Fair Penitent. But, by what 
would now be styled a clever feat of prestidigi- 
tation, the forewarned Robinson struck off the 
following, this time to Lady Rochford: — 

* She was married to Charles, amel of her by Zincke after Van- 

3rd Viscount Townshend, in 1723, loo in the Tribune at Strawberry 

and was the mother of Charles Hill. 

Townshend the statesman. She t Query — "print." 
died in 1788. There was an en- 

13* 



1 90 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 



THE PRESS SPEAKS. 

Pn vain from your properest name you have flown, 
And exchanged lovely Cupid's for Hymen's dull throne; 
By my art shall your beauties be constantly sung 
And in spite of yourself you shall ever be young. 

Lady Rochford's maiden name, it should be ex- 
plained, was "Young." Such were what their 
inventor calls les amusements des eaux de Stra- 
berri in the month of August and the year of 
grace 1757. 

Besides the major efforts already mentioned, 
the Short Notes contain references to various 
occasional pieces which Walpole composed, 
some of which he printed, and some others of 
which have been published since his death. One 
of these, The Magpie and her Brood, was a 
pleasant little fable from the French of Bona- 
venture des Periers, rhymed for Miss Hotham, 
the youthful niece of his neighbour Lady 
Suffolk ; another a Dialogue between two Great 
Ladies. In 1761, he wrote a little piece called 
The Garland, a poem on the King, which first 
saw the light in the Quarterly for 1852. Be- 
sides these were several epigrams, mock ser- 
mons, and occasional verses. But perhaps the 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 191 

most interesting of his productions in this kind 
are the verses which he wrote in August, 1759, 
called The Parish Register of 'Twickenham. It 
is a metrical list of all the remarkable persons 
who ever lived there, for which reason a portion 
of it may find a place here : — 



Where silver Thames round Twit'nam meads 
His winding current sweetly leads; 
Twit'nam, the Muses' fav'rite seat, 
Twit'nam, the Graces' lov'd retreat; 
Th^re polish'd Essex wont to sport, 
The pride and victim of a court ! 
There Bacon tuned the grateful lyre 
To soothe Eliza's haughty ire ; 
— Ah ! happy had no meaner strain 
Than friendship's dashed his mighty vein ! 
Twit'nam, where Hyde, majestic sage, 
Retir'd from frolic's frantic stage, 
While his vast soul was hung on tenters 
To mend the world, and vex dissenters ; 
Twit'nam, where frolic Wharton revel'd, 
Where Montague with lock dishevel'd 
(Conflict of dirt and warmth divine), 
Invok'd — and scandalis'd the Nine : 
Where Pope in moral music spoke 
To th' anguish'd soul of Bolingbroke, 
And whisper'd, how true genius errs, 
Preferring joys that power confers; 
Bliss, never to great minds arising 
From ruling worlds, but from despising : 
Where Fielding met his bunter Muse, 
And, as they quaff 'd the fiery juice, 



192 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

Droll Nature stamp'd each lucky hit 

With inimaginable wit : 

Where Suffolk sought the peaceful scene, 

Resigning Richmond to the Queen, 

And all the glory, all the teasing, 

Of pleasing one, not worth the pleasing : 

Where Fanny, ' ever blooming fair,' 

Ejaculates the graceful pray'r, 

And, scap'd from sense, with nonsense smit, 

For Whitfield's cant leaves Stanhope's wit : 

Amid this choir of sounding names 

Of statesmen, bards and beauteous dames, 

Shall the last trifler of the throng 

Enroll his own such names among ? 

— Oh ! no — Enough if I consign 

To lasting types their notes divine : 

Enough, if Strawberry's humble-hill 

The title-page of fame shall fill." * 



In 1784, Walpole added a few lines to cele- 
brate a new resident and a new favourite, Lady 
Di Beauclerk, the widow of Johnson's famous 
friend.f Most of the other names which occur 
in the Twickenham Register are easily identi- 
fied. "Fanny, 'ever blooming fair'" was the 
beautiful Lady Fanny Shirley of Philips' ballad, 
aunt of that fourth Earl Ferrers, who in 1 760 
was hung- at Tyburn for murdering his steward. 
Miss Hawkins remembered her as residing at 
a house now called Heath Lane Lodge with her 

* Works, 1798, Vol. iv, pp. 382-3. t See Chapter ix. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 1 93 

mother, "a very ancient Countess Ferrers," 
widow of the first Earl. Henry Fielding, to 
whom Walpole gives a quatrain, of which the 
second couplet must excuse the insolence of the 
first, had for some time lodgings in Back Lane, 
whence was baptised in February, 1748, the 
elder of his sons by his second wife, the William 
Fielding, who, like his father, became a West- 
minster magistrate. It is more likely that Tom 
Jones was written at Twickenham than at any 
of the dozen other places for which that honour 
is claimed, since the author quitted Twickenham 
late in 1 748, and his great novel was published 
early in the following year. Walpole had only 
been resident for a short time when Fielding 
left, but even had this been otherwise, it is not 
likely that, between the master of the Comic 
Epos (who was also Lady Mary's cousin !) and 
the dilettante proprietor of Strawberry, there 
could ever have been much cordiality. Indeed, 
for some of the robuster spirits of his age Wal- 
pole shows an extraordinary distaste, which 
with him generally implies unsympathetic, if not 
absolutely illiberal, comment. Almost the only 
important anecdote of Fielding in his correspon- 
dence is one of which the distorting bias is 



194 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

demonstrable,* and to Fielding's contemporary 
Hogarth, although as a connoisseur he was 
shrewd enough to collect his works, he scarcely 
ever refers but to place him in a ridiculous 
aspect, a course which contrasts curiously with 
the extravagant praise he gives to Bentley, 
Bunbury, Lady Beauclerk, and some other of 
the very minor artistic lights in his own circle. 
It is, however, possible to write too long an 
excursus upon the Twickenham Parish Reg- 
ister, and the last paragraphs of this chapter 
belong of right to another and more important 
work, The Castle of Otranto. According to the 
Short Notes, this " Gothic romance "was begun 
in June, 1764, and finished on the 6th August 
following. From another account we learn that 
it occupied eight nights of this period from ten 
o'clock at night until two in the morning, to 
the accompaniment of coffee. In a letter to 
Cole, the Cambridge antiquary, with whom 
Walpole commenced to correspond in 1762, he 
gives some further particulars, which, because 
they have been so often quoted, can scarcely be 
omitted here: — "Shall I even confess to you, 

* Cf. Chapter vi of Fielding, Men of Letters series, 2nd edition, 
by the present writer, in the 1889. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 195 

what was the origin of this romance ! I waked 
one morning, in the beginning of last June, 
from a dream, of which, all I could recover was, 
that I had thought myself in an ancient castle 
(a very natural dream for a head filled like mine 
with Gothic story), and that on the uppermost 
bannister of a great staircase I saw a gigantic 
hand in armour. In the evening I sat down, 
and began to write, without knowing in the 
least what I intended to say or relate. The 
work grew on my hands and I grew fond of it 
— add that I was very glad to think of anything, 
rather than politics. In short, I was so en- 
grossed by my tale, which I completed in less 
than two months, that one evening, I wrote 
from the time I had drunk my tea, about six 
o'clock, till half an hour after one in the morn- 
ing, when my hand and fingers were so weary, 
that I could not hold the pen to finish the sen- 
tence, but left Matilda and Isabella talking, in 
the middle of a paragraph."* 

The work of which the origin is thus de- 
scribed was published in a limited edition on 
the 24th December, 1 764, with the title of The 
Castle of Otranto, a Story, translated by William 

* Letter tt> Cole, 9 Mar., 1765. 



1 96 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

Marshal, Gent, from the original Italian of 
Onuphrio Muralto, Canon of the Church of St. 
Nicholas at Otranto. The name of the alleged 
Italian author is sometimes described as an 
anagram for Horace Walpole — a misconception 
which is easily demonstrated by counting the 
letters. The book was printed not for Walpole, 
but for Lownds of Fleet Street, and it was pref- 
aced by an introduction in which the author 
described and criticised the supposed original, 
which he declared to be a black-letter printed 
at Naples in 1529. Its success was consider- 
able. It seems at first to have excited no 
suspicion as to its authenticity, and it is not 
clear that even Gray, to whom a copy was sent 
immediately after publication, was in the secret. 
"I have received the Castle of Otranto," — he 
says, — " and return you my thanks for it. It 
engages our attention here [at Cambridge], 
makes some of us cry a little, and all in general 
afraid to go to bed o' nights." In the second 
edition, which followed in April, 1 765, Walpole 
dropped the mask, disclosing his authorship in 
a second preface of great ability, which, among 
other things, contains a vindication of Shake- 
speare's mingling of comedy and tragedy 



Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 197 

against the strictures of Voltaire — a piece of 
temerity which some of his French friends feared 
might prejudice him with that formidable critic. 
But what is even more interesting is his own 
account of what he had attempted. He had 
endeavoured to blend ancient and modern 
romance — to employ the old supernatural 
agencies of Scuderi and La Calprenede as the 
background to the adventures of personages 
modelled as closely upon ordinary life as the 
personages of Tom Jones. These are not his 
actual illustrations, but they express his mean- 
ing. " The actions, sentiments, conversations, 
of the heroes and heroines of ancient days were 
as unnatural as the machines employed to set 
them in motion." He would make his heroes 
and heroines natural in all these things, only 
borrowing from the older school some of that 
imagination, invention, and fancy which, in the 
literal reproduction of life, he thought too much 
neglected. 

His idea was novel, and the moment a favour- 
able one for its development. Fluently and 
lucidly written, the Castle of Otranto set a 
fashion in literature. But, like many other 
works produced under similar conditions, it had 



198 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

its day. To the pioneer of a movement which 
has exhausted itself, there comes often what is 
almost worse than oblivion — discredit and neg- 
lect. A generation like the present, for whom 
fiction has unravelled so many intricate combi- 
nations, and whose Gothicism and Medievalism 
is better instructed than Walpole's, no longer 
feels its soul harrowed up in the same way as 
did his hushed and awe-struck readers of the 
days of the third George. To the critic the 
book is interesting as the first of a school of 
romances which had the honour of influencing 
even the mighty "Wizard of the North," who, 
no doubt in gratitude, wrote for Ballanty tie's 
Novelist's Library a most appreciative study 
of the story. But we doubt if that many-plumed 
and monstrous helmet, which crashes through 
walls and cellars, could now give a single shiver 
to the most timorous Cambridge don, while we 
suspect that the majority of modern students 
would, like the author, leave Matilda and Isa- 
bella talking in the middle of a paragraph, but 
from a different kind of weariness. Autres 
temps, autres mceurs — especially in the matter 
of Gothic romance. 



CHAPTER VII. 

State of French Society in 1763 ; Walpole at Paris ; the Royal 
Family and the bete du Gevaudan ; French ladies of quality ; 
Madame du Deffand ; a letter from Madame de Sevigne ; 
Rousseau and the King of Prussia; the Hume-Rousseau 
quarrel ; returns to England and hears Wesley at Bath; 
Paris again ; Madame du Deffand 's vitality j her character ; 
minor literary efforts ; the " Historic Doubts" ; the u Myste- 
rious Mother"; tragedy in England ; doings of the Straw- 
berry Press ; Walpole and Chatterton. 



14 



mi 













VII. 



WHEN, towards the close of 1765, Wal- 
pole made the first of several visits to 
Paris, the society of the French capital, and 
indeed French society generally, was showing 
signs of that coming culbute generale which was 
not to be long deferred. The upper classes 
were shamelessly immoral, and, from the King 
downwards, liaisons of the most open character 

excited neither censure nor comment. It was 

203 



204 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

the era of Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists ; it 
was the era of Rousseau and the Sentimental- 
ists; it was also the era of confirmed Anglo- 
mania. While we, on our side, were beginning 
to copy the comedies larmoyantes of La Chaussee 
and Diderot, the French in their turn were 
acting Romeo and Juliet and raving over 
Richardson. Richardson's chief rival in their 
eyes was Hume, then a charge a" affaires, and in 
spite of his plain face and bad French, the idol 
of the freethinkers. He "is treated here," says 
Walpole, "with perfect veneration," and we 
learn from other sources that no lady's toilette 
was complete without his attendance. "At the 
Opera," — says Lord Charlemont, — " his broad 
unmeaning face was usually seen entre deux 
jolis minois ; the ladies in France gave the ton, 
and the ton was Deism." Apart from literature, 
irreligion, and philosophy, the chief occupation 
was cards. "Whisk and Richardson" is Wal- 
pole's later definition of French society ; "Whisk 
and disputes," that of Hume. According to 
Walpole, a kind of pedantry and solemnity was 
the characteristic of conversation, and "laughing 
was as much out of fashion as pantins or bilbo- 
quets. Good folks, they have no time to laugh. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 205 

There is God and the King to be pulled down 
first ; and men and women, one and all, are 
devoutly employed in the demolition." How 
that enterprise eventuated history has recorded. 
It is needless, however, to rehearse the origins 
of the French Revolution, in order to make a 
background for the visit of an English gentle- 
man to Paris in 1 765. Walpole had been medi- 
tating this journey for two or three years, but 
the state of his health among other things (he 
suffered much from gout) had from time to time 
postponed it. In 1763, he had been going 
next spring;* but when next spring came he 
talked of the beginning of 1 765. Nevertheless, 
in March of that year, Gilly Williams writes to 
Selwyn : " Horry Walpole has now postponed 
his journey till May," and then he goes on to 
speak of the Castle of Otranto in a way which 
shows that all the author's friends were not 
equally enthusiastic respecting that ingenious 
romance. " How do you think he has employed 
that leisure which his political frenzy has allowed 
of? In writing a novel . . . and such a novel 

* It is curious to note in one of go to Paris." Walpole is more 

his letters of 1763 a mot which sardonic. " Paris," he says, " like 

may be compared with the famous the description of the grave, is the 

" Good Americans, when they die, way of all flesh. " 

14* 



206 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

that no boarding-school miss of thirteen could 
get through without yawning. It consists of 
ghosts and enchantments ; pictures walk out of 
their frames, and are good company for half an 
hour together; helmets drop from the moon, 
and cover half a family. He says it was a dream, 
and I fancy one when he had some feverish dis- 
position in him."* May, however, had arrived 
and passed, and the Castle of Otranto was in its 
second edition, before Walpole at last set out, on 
Monday, the 9th September, 1 765. After a seven 
hours' passage, he reached Calais from Dover. 
Near Amiens he was refreshed by a sight of one 
of his favourites, Lady Mary Coke, " in pea- 
green and silver"; at Chantilly he was robbed 
of his portmanteau. By the time he reached 
Paris on the 13th, he had already "fallen in love 
with twenty things, and in hate with forty." The 
dirt of Paris, the narrowness of the streets, the 
" trees clipped to resemble brooms, and planted 
on pedestals of chalk," disgust him. But he is 
enraptured with the treillage and fountains " and 
will prove it at Strawberry." He detests the 
French opera, but loves the French opera-comique 
with its Italian comedy and his passion — * his 

* Gilly Williams to Selwyn, 19 March, 1765. 



Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 207 

dear favourite harlequin." But, upon the whole, in 
these first impressions he is disappointed. Society 
is duller than he expected, and with the staple 
topics of its conversation, philosophy, literature, 
and freethinking, he is (or says he is) out of sym- 
pathy. " Freethinking is for one's self, surely 
not for society ... I dined to-day with half 
a dozen savans, and though all the servants were 
waiting, the conversation was much more unre- 
strained, even on the Old Testament, than I 
would suffer at my own table in England, if a 
single footman was present. For literature, it is 
very amusing when one has nothing else to do. 
I think it rather pedantic in society; tiresome 
when displayed professedly ; and, besides, in this 
country one is sure it is only a 'fashion of the 
day.'" And then he goes on to say that the 
reigning fashion is Richardson and Hume.* 

One of his earliest experiences was his pre- 
sentation at Versailles to the royal family, a 
ceremony which luckily involved but one opera- 
tion instead of several as in England, where the 
Princess Dowager of Wales, the Duke of Cum- 
berland, and the Princess Amelia had all their 
different levees. He gives an account of this 

* Walpole to Montagu, 22 September, 1765. 



208 Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 

to Lady Hervey; but repeats it on the same 
day with much greater detail in a letter to 
Chute. " You perceive (he says) that I have 
been presented. The Queen took great notice 
of me [for which reason, in imitation of Madame 
de Sevigne, he tells Lady Hervey that she is le 
plus grand roi du monde~\ ; none of the rest said 
a syllable. You are let into the King's bed- 
chamber just as he has put on his shirt; he 
dresses and talks good-humouredly to a few, 
glares at strangers, goes to mass, to dinner, 
and a-hunting. The good old Queen, who is 
like Lady Primrose in the face, and Queen 
Caroline in the immensity of her cap, is at her 
dressing-table attended by two or three old 
ladies. . . . Thence you go to the Dauphin, for 
all is done in an hour. He scarce stays a 
minute; indeed, poor creature, he is a ghost, 
and cannot possibly last three months. [He 
died, in fact, within this time, on the 20th De- 
cember.] The Dauphiness is in her bedcham- 
ber, but dressed and standing; looks cross, is 
not civil, and has the true Westphalian grace 
and accents. The four Mesdames [these were 
the Graille, Chiffe, Coche, and Loque of history] 
who are clumsy plump old wenches, with a bad 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 209 

likeness to their father, stand in a bedchamber 
in a row, with black cloaks and knotting bags, 
looking good-humoured, [and] not knowing 
what to say. . . . This ceremony is very short; 
then you are carried to the Dauphin's three 
boys, who you maybe sure only bow and stare. 
The Duke of Berry [afterwards Louis XVI] 
looks weak and weak-eyed: the Count de Pro- 
vence [Louis XVIII] is a fine boy; the Count 
d'Artois [Charles X] well enough. The whole 
concludes with seeing the Dauphin's little girl 
dine, who is as round and as fat as a pudding."* 
Such is Walpole's account of the royal family 
of France on exhibition. In the Queen's ante- 
chamber he was treated to a sight of the famous 
bete du Ge'vaudan, a monstrous wolf of which a 
highly sensational representation had been 
given in the St. James's Chronicle for the pre- 
vious June. It had just been shot, after a 
triumphant and nefarious career, and was ex- 
hibited by two chasseurs " with as much parade 
as if it was Mr. Pitt." f 

When he had been at Paris little more than 

* Walpole to Chute, 3 October, moires : — "Tout le monde a en- 

1765. tendu parler de la hyene de 

t Madame de Genlis mentions Gevaudan, qui a fait tant de ra- 

this fearsome beast in her Me- vages." 



210 Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 

a month, he was laid up with the gout in both 
feet. He was visited in his illness by Wilkes, 
for whom he expresses no admiration. From 
another letter it appears that Sterne and Foote 
were also visiting the French capital at this 
time. In November, he is still limping about, 
and it is evident that confinement "in a bed- 
chamber in a hotel garni . . . when the court 
is at Fontainebleau," has not been without its 
effect upon his views of things in general. In 
writing to Gray (who replies with all sorts of 
kindly remedies), he says "the charms of Paris 
have not the least attraction for me, nor would 
keep me an hour on their own account. For 
the city itself, I cannot conceive where my eyes 
were : it is the ugliest beastliest town in the 
universe. I have not seen a mouthful of ver- 
dure out of it, nor have they anything green but 
their treillage and window shutters. . . Their 
boasted knowledge of society is reduced to talk- 
ing of their suppers, and every malady they have 
about them, or know of." A day or two later his 
gout and his stick have left him, and his good 
humour is coming back. Before the end of the 
month, he is growing reconciled to his environ- 
ment ; and by January " France is so agreeable, 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 2 1 1 

and England so much the reverse," he tells Lady 
Hervey, "that he does not know when he shall 
return." The great ladies, too, Madame de 
Brionne, Madame d'Aiguillon, Marshal Riche- 
lieu's daughter, Madame d'Egmont (with whom 
he could fall in love if it would break anybody's 
heart in England), begin to flatter and caress 
him. "His last new passion" is the Duchess 
de Choiseul, who is so charming "that you 
would take her for the queen of an allegory." 
" One dreads its finishing, as much as a lover, 
if she would admit one, would wish it should 
finish." There is also a beautiful Countess de 
Forcalquier, the "broken music" of whose ele- 
mentary English stirs him into heroics too Ar- 
cadian for the meridian of London where Lady 
Hervey is warned not to exhibit them to the 
profane.* 

In a letter of later date to Gray, he describes 
some more of these graceful and witty leaders 
of fashion, whose "douceur" he seems to have 
greatly preferred to the pompous and arrogant 

* Of Mad. de Forcalquier it is was so great as to interrupt the 
related that, entering a theatre dur- play. The point of this, in a recent 
ing the performance of Gresset's repetition of the anecdote, was a 
Le Meckant, just as the line was little blunted by the printer's sub- 
uttered, " La faute est aux dieux stitution of " bete " for " belle." 
qui la firent si belle" the applause 



2 1 2 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

fatuity of the men. "They have taken up 
gravity" — he says of these latter — "thinking 
it was philosophy and English, and so have ac- 
quired nothing in the room of their natural 
levity and cheerfulness." But with the women 
the case is different. He knows six or seven 
"with very superior understandings; some of 
them with wit, or with softness, or very good 
sense." His first portrait is of the famous 
Madame Geoffrin, to whom he had been 
recommended by Lady Hervey, and who had 
visited him when imprisoned in his chambre 
garni. He lays stress upon her knowledge of 
character, her tact and good sense, and the 
happy mingling of freedom and severity by 
which she preserved her position as "an 
epitome of empire, subsisting by rewards and 
punishments." Then there is the Marechale de 
Mirepoix, a courtier and intrigante of the first 
order. " She is false, artful, and insinuating 
beyond measure when it is her interest, but 
indolent and a coward" — says Walpole, who 
does not measure his words even when speak- 
ing of a beauty and a Princess of Lorraine. 
Others are the savante, Madame de Boufflers, 
who visited England and Johnson, and whom 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 213 

the writer hits off neatly by saying that you 
would think she was always sitting for her pic- 
ture to her biographer ; a second savante, 
Madame de Rochfort, " the decent friend " of 
Walpole's visitor at Strawberry, the Due de 
Nivernois; the already mentioned Duchess de 
Choiseul, and Madame la Marechale de Lux- 
embourg, whose youth had been stormy, but 
who was now softening down into a kind of 
twilight melancholy which made her rather 
attractive. This last, with one exception, com- 
pletes his list. 

The one exception is a figure which hence- 
forth played no inconsiderable part in Walpole's 
correspondence — that of the brilliant and witty 
Madame du Deffand. As Marie de Vichy- 
Chamroud, she had been married at one-and- 
twenty to the nobleman whose name she bore, 
and had followed the custom of her day by 
speedily choosing a lover, who had many suc- 
cessors. For a brief space she had captivated 
the Regent himself, and at this date, being 
nearly seventy and hopelessly blind, was con- 
tinuing, from mere force of habit, a " decent 
friendship" with the deaf President Henault. 
At first Walpole was not impressed with her, 



214 Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 

and speaks of her, disrespectfully, as "an old 
blind debauchee of wit." A little later, although 
he still refers to her as the "old lady of the 
house," he says she is very agreeable. Later 
still, she has completed her conquest by telling 
him he has le fou mocquer; and in the letter to 
Gray above quoted, it is plain that she has be- 
come an object of absorbing interest to him, not 
unmingled with a nervous apprehension of her 
undisguised partiality for his society. In spite 
of her affliction (he says) she "retains all her 
vivacity, wit, memory, judgment, passions, and 
agreeableness. She goes to Operas, Plays, 
suppers, and Versailles ; gives suppers twice a 
week; has every thing new read to her ; makes 
new songs and epigrams, ay, admirably,* and 
remembers every one that has been made these 
fourscore years. She corresponds with Voltaire, 
dictates charming letters to him, contradicts him, 
is no bigot to him or anybody, and laughs both 
at the clergy and the philosophers. In a dis- 

* One of her logogriphes is as follows : — 

" Quoique je forme tin corps, je ne suis qiCune idee ; 
Plus ma beaule vieillit, phis elle est decidee : 
Ilfaut,pour me trouver, ignorer d'oiije viens : 
Je tiens tout de lui, qui reduit tout a rien." 
The answer is noblesse. Lord Chesterfield thought it so good that 
he sent it to his godson (Letter 166). 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 215 

pute, into which she easily falls, she is very- 
warm, and yet scarce ever in the wrong: her 
judgment on every subject is as just as pos- 
sible : on every point of conduct as wrong as 
possible : for she is all love and hatred, passion- 
ate for her friends to enthusiasm, still anxious to 
be loved, I don't mean by lovers, and a vehement 
enemy, but openly. As she can have no amuse- 
ment but conversation, the least solitude and en- 
nui are insupportable to her, and put her into 
the power of several worthless people who eat 
her suppers when they can eat nobody's of 
higher rank ; wink to one another and laugh at 
her ; hate her because she has forty times more 
parts — and venture to hate her because she is 
not rich."* In another letter to Mr. James 
Crawford of Auchinames (Hume's Fish Craw- 
ford), who was also one of Madame du Deffand's 
admirers, he says, in repeating some of the above 
details, that he is not " ashamed of interesting 
himself exceedingly about her. To say nothing 
of her extraordinary parts, she is certainly the 
most generous friendly being upon earth." 
Upon her side Madame du Deffand seems to 
have been equally attracted by the strange 

* Walpole to Gray, 25 Jan., 1766. 



216 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

mixture of independence and effeminacy which 
went to make up Walpole's character. Her 
fondness for him rapidly grew into a kind of 
infatuation. He had no sooner quitted Paris, 
which he did on the 1 7th April, than she began 
to correspond with him, and thenceforward, 
until her death in 1780, her letters, dictated to 
her faithful secretary Wiart, continued, except 
when Walpole was actually visiting her (and 
she sometimes wrote to him even then), to 
reach him regularly. Not long after his return 
to England, she made him the victim of a 
charming hoax. He had, when in Paris, ad- 
mired a snuff-box, which bore a portrait of 
Madame de Sevigne, for whom he professed an 
extravagant admiration. Madame du Deffand 
procured a similar box, had the portrait copied, 
and sent it to him with a letter, purporting to 
come from the dateless Elysian Fields and 
"Notre Dame de Livry" herself, in which he 
was enjoined to use his present always, and to 
bring it often to France and the Faubourg St. 
Germain. Walpole was completely taken in, 
and imagined that the box had come from 
Madame de Choiseul; but he should have known 
that no one living but his blind friend could 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 2 1 7 

have written " that most charming of all letters." 
The box itself, the memento of so much old- 
world ingenuity, was sold (with the pseudo- 
Sevigne letter) at the Strawberry Hill sale for 
£2% 7s. When witty Mrs. Clive heard of the 
last addition to Walpole's list of favourites, she 
delivered herself of a good-humoured bon mot. 
There was a new resident at Twickenham — 
the Earl of Shelburne's widow. " If the new 
Countess is but lame," quoth Clive (referring 
to the fact that Lady Suffolk was deaf and 
Madame du Deffand blind), " I shall have no 
chance of ever seeing you." But there is noth- 
ing to show that he ever relaxed in his attentions 
to the delightful actress whom he somewhere 
styles dimidium anima mece. 

One of the other illustrious visitors to Paris 
during Walpole's stay there was Rousseau. 
Being no longer safe in his Swiss asylum, 
where the curate of Motiers had excited the 
mob against him, that extraordinary self-tor- 
mentor, clad in his Armenian costume, had ar- 
rived in December, at the French capital, and 
shortly afterwards left for England under the 
safe conduct of Hume, who had undertaken to 
procure him a fresh resting-place. He reached 
*5 



218 Horace Walpok : A Memoir. 

London on the 14th January. Walpole had, to 
use his own phrase, "a hearty contempt" for 
the fugitive sentimentalist and his grievances, 
and not long before Rousseau's advent in Paris, 
taking for his pretext an offer made by the 
King of Prussia, he had woven some of the light 
mockery at Madame Geoffrin's into a sham letter 
from Frederick to Jean-Jacques, couched in the 
true Walpolean spirit of persiflage. It is dim- 
cult to summarise, and may be reproduced here 
as its author transcribed it on 12 January, 1766, 
for the benefit of Conway : — 

Le Roi de Prusse a Monsieur Rousseau. 

Mon cher Jean Jacques, 

Vous avez renonce a Geneve votre patrie ; vous vous etes 
fait chasser de la Suisse; pays tant vante" dans vos ecrits; 
la France vous a decret6. Venez done chez moi; j'admire 
vos talens; je m'amuse de vos reveries, qui (soit dit en pas- 
sant) vous occupent trop, et trop-long terns. II faut a la fin 
etre sage et heureux. Vous avez fait assez parler de vous 
par des singularites peu convenables a un veritable grand 
horame. Demontrez a vos ennemis que vous pouvez avoir 
quelquefois le sens commun : cela les fachera, sans vous 
faire tort. Mes etats vous offrent une retraite paisible ; je 
vous veux du bien, et je vous en ferai, si vous le trouvez bon. 
Mais si vous obstiniez a rejetter mon secours, attendez-vous 
que je ne le dirai a personne. Si vous persistez a vous creu- 
ser l'esprit pour trouver de nouveaux malheurs, choisissez les 
tels que vous voudrez. Je suis roi, je puis vous en procurer 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 2 1 9 

au gre de vos souhaits : et ce qui surement ne vous arrivera 
pas vis a vis de vos ennemis, je cesserai de vous pers6cuter 
quand vous cesserez de mettre votre gloire a l'etre. 

Votre bon ami, Frederic. 

This composition, the French of which was 
touched up by Helvetius, Henault, and the Due 
de Nivernois, gave extreme satisfaction to all 
the anti-Rousseau party. While Hume and 
his protege were still in Paris, Walpole, out 
of delicacy to Hume, managed to keep the 
matter a secret, and he also abstained from 
making any overtures to Rousseau, whom, as 
he truly said, he could scarcely have visited 
cordially with a letter in his pocket written to 
ridicule him. But Hume had no sooner de- 
parted, than Frederick's sham invitation went 
the round, ultimately finding its way across the 
Channel, where it was printed in the St. James's 
Chronicle. Rousseau, always on the alert to 
pose as the victim of plots and conspiracies, was 
naturally furious, and wrote angrily from his 
retreat at Mr. Davenport's in Derbyshire to 
denounce the fabrication. The worst of it was, 
that his morbid nature immediately suspected 
the innocent Hume of participating in the trick. 
" What rends my heart is," — he told the Chron- 



220 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

icle, — "that the impostor has accomplices in Eng- 
land" and this delusion became one of the main 
elements in that "twice-told tale/' — the quarrel 
of Hume and Rousseau. Walpole was called 
upon to clear Hume from having any hand in 
the letter, and several communications, all of 
which are printed at length in the fourth vol- 
ume of his works, followed upon the same sub- 
ject. Their discussion would occupy too large 
a space in this limited memoir.* It is however 
worth noticing that Walpole's instinct appears 
to have foreseen the trouble that fell upon 
Hume. " I wish," he wrote to Lady Hervey, 
in a letter which Hume carried to England 
when he accompanied his intractable protege 
thither, " I wish he may not repent having en- 
gaged with Rousseau, who contradicts and 
quarrels with all mankind, in order to obtain 
their admiration." f He certainly, upon the 
present occasion, did not belie this uncompli- 
mentary character. 

* Hume's narrative of the affair embert, relative to this extraordi- 

may be read in A Concise and nary Affair. Translated from the 

Genuine Account of the Dispute French. London. Printed for T. 

between Mr. Hume and Mr. Rous- Becket and P. A. de Hondt, near 

seau ; with the Letters that passed Surry-street, in the Strand, ijbb. 

between them during their Coniro- t Walpole to Lady Hervey, 2 

versy. As also the Letters of the January, 1 766. 
Hon. Mr. Walpole and Mr. D'Al- 



Horace Walpole: A Memoir. ii\ 

Before the last stages of the Hume-Rous- 
seau controversy had been reached, Hume was 
back again in Paris, and Walpole had returned 
to London. Upon the whole, he told Mann, he 
liked France so well that he should certainly go 
there again. In September, 1 766, he was once 
more attacked with gout, and went to Bath, whose 
Avon (as compared with his favourite Thames) 
he considers "paltry enough to' be the Seine 
or Tyber." Nothing pleases him much at Bath, 
although it contained such notabilities as Lord 
Chatham, Lord Northington, and Lord Camden; 
but he goes to hear Wesley, of whom he writes 
rather flippantly to Chute. He describes him 
as "a lean, elderly man, fresh-coloured, his hair 
smoothly combed, with a soupcon of curl at the 
ends." "Wondrous clean (he adds) but as evi- 
dently an actor as Garrick. He spoke his ser- 
mon, but so fast, and with so little accent, that 
I am sure he has often uttered it, for it was like 
a lesson. There were parts and eloquence in it ; 
but towards the end he exalted his voice, and 
acted very ugly enthusiasm, decried learning, 
and told stories, like Latimer, of the fool of his 
college who said, "I thanks God for everything."* 

* Walpole to Chute, 10 Oct., 1766. 
15* 



222 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

He returned to Strawberry Hill in October. In 
August of the next year he again went to Paris, 
going almost straight to Madame du Deffand's 
where he finds Mademoiselle Clairon (who had 
quitted the stage) invited to declaim Corneille in 
his honour, and he sups in a distinguished com- 
pany. His visit upon this occasion lasted two 
months, but his letters for this period contain 
few interesting particulars, while those of the 
lady cease altogether, to be resumed again on 
the 9th October, a few hours after his depar- 
ture. Two years later he goes once more to 
Paris and his blind friend, whom he finds in bet- 
ter health than ever, and with spirits so in- 
creased that he tells her she will go mad with 
age. " When they ask her how old she is, she 
answers, J'ai soixante et mille ans." Her sep- 
tuagenarian activity might well have wearied a 
younger man. " She and I (he says) went to 
the Boulevard last night after supper, and drove 
about there till two in the morning. We are 
going to sup in the country this evening, and 
are to go to-morrow night at eleven to the pup- 
pet-show." In a letter to George Montagu, 
which adds some further details to her portrait, 
he writes: — " I have heard her dispute with all 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 223 

sorts of people, on all sorts of subjects, and 
never knew her in the wrong. She humbles the 
learned, sets right their disciples, and finds con- 
versation for everybody. Affectionate as Ma- 
dame de Sevigne, she has none of her preju- 
dices, but a more universal taste ; and, with the 
most delicate frame, her spirits hurry her through 
a life of fatigue that would kill me, if I was to 
continue here. I had great difficulty last night to 
persuade her, though she was not well, not to sit 
up till between two and three for the comet ; for 
which purpose she had appointed an astronomer 
to bring his telescopes to the president Henault's, 
as she thought it would amuse me. In short, 
her goodness to me is so excessive, that I feel 
unashamed at producing my withered person in 
a round of diversions, which I have quitted at 
home."* One of the other amusements which 
she procured for him was the entree of the fa- 
mous convent of Saint Cyr, of which he gives 
an interesting account. He inspects the pen- 
sioners and the numerous portraits of the foun- 
dress, Madame de Maintenon. In one class-room 
he hears the young ladies sing the choruses in 
Athalie ; in another sees them dance minuets 

* Walpole to Montagu, J September, 1 769. 



224 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

to the violin of a nun who is not precisely St. 
Cecilia. In a third room they act proverbes by 
the foundress. Finally he is enabled to enrich 
the archives of Strawberry with a piece of paper 
containing a few sentences of that illustrious 
lady's handwriting. 

Walpole's literary productions for this date 
(in addition to the letter from the King of 
Prussia to Rousseau) are scheduled in the 
Short Notes with his usual minuteness. In 
June, 1766, shortly after his return from Paris, 
he wrote a squib upon Captain Byron's descrip- 
tion of the Patagonians, entitled An Account 
of the Giants recently discovered, which was 
published on the 25th August. On 18 Aug- 
ust, he began his Memoirs of the Reign of 
King George the Third, and, in 1767, the detec- 
tion of a work published at Paris in two volumes 
under the title of the Testament du Chevalier 
Robert Walpole and "stamped in that mint of 
forgeries, Holland." This, which is printed in 
the second volume of his works, remained un- 
published during his lifetime, as no English 
translation of the Testame?it was ever made. 
His next deliverance was a letter, subsequently 
printed in the St. James s Chronicle for 28 May, 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 225 

in which he announced to the Corporation of 
Lynn, in the person of their Mayor, Mr. Lang- 
ley, that he did not intend to offer himself again 
as the representative in Parliament of that 
town. A wish to retire from all public busi- 
ness and the declining state of his health are 
assigned as the reason for his thus breaking his 
Parliamentary connection, which had now lasted 
for five-and-twenty years. Following upon this 
comes the account of his action in the Hume 
and Rousseau quarrel, which ultimately found a 
place in the fourth volume of his works, and a 
couple of letters on Political A buse in News- 
papers. These appeared in the Public Adver- 
tiser. But the chief results of his leisure in 1 766-8 
are to be found in two efforts more ambitious 
than any of those above mentioned, The His- 
toric Doubts on Richard the Third, and the 
tragedy of The Mysterious Mother. The 
Historic Doubts was begun in the winter of 
1767 and published in February, 1768; the 
tragedy in December, 1766, and published in 
March, 1768. 

The Historic Doubts was a paradoxical at- 
tempt to vindicate Richard III from his tradi- 
tional character, which Walpole considered had 



226 Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 

been intentionally blackened in order to whiten 
that of Henry VII. " Vous series un excellent at- 
tornei general" — wrote Voltaire to him, — "vous 
pesez toutes les probabilites." He might have 
added that they were all weighed on one side. 
Gray admits the clearness with which the prin- 
cipal part of the arguments was made out ; but 
he remained unconvinced, especially as regards 
the murder of Henry VI. Other opponents 
speedily appeared, who were neither so friendly 
nor so gentle. The Critical Review attacked 
him for not having referred to Guthrie's His- 
tory of England, which had in some respects 
anticipated him ; and he was also criticised ad- 
versely by the London Chronicle. Of these 
attacks Walpole spoke and wrote very con- 
temptuously ; but he seems to have been con- 
siderably nettled by the conduct of a Swiss 
named Deverdun, who, giving an account of 
the book in a work called Memoires Litteraires 
de la Grande Bretagne for 1768, declared his 
preference for the views which Hume had ex- 
pressed in certain notes to the said account. 
Deverdun's action appears to have stung Wal- 
pole into a supplementary defence of his theo- 
ries, in which he dealt with his critics generally. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 227 

This he did not print, but left it to appear as 
a postscript in his works. In 1770, however, 
his arguments were contested by Dr. Milles, 
Dean of Exeter, to whom he replied ; and later 
still another antiquary, the Rev. Mr. Masters, 
came forward. The last two assailants were 
members of the Society of Antiquaries, from 
which body, Walpole, in consequence, withdrew. 
But he practically abandoned his theories in a 
postscript written in February, 1 793, which is to 
be found in the second volume of his works. 

Concerning the second work, The Mysteri- 
ous Mother, most of Walpole's biographers are 
content to abide in generalities. That the pro- 
prietor of Gothic Strawberry should have pro- 
duced The Castle of Otranto has a certain con- 
gruity, but one scarcely expects to find the same 
person indulging in a tragedy sombre enough 
to have taxed the powers of Ford or Webster. 
It is a curious example of literary reaction, and 
his own words respecting it are contradictory. 
To Montagu and to Madame du Deffand he 
writes apologetically. " II ne vous plairoit pas 
assure'ment" — he says to the lady; — "ilriya 
pas de beaux sentiments. II ny a que des pas- 
sions sans envelope, des crimes, des repentis, et des 



2 28 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

horreurs,"* and he lays his finger on one of its 
gravest defects when he goes on to say that its 
interest languishes from the first act to the last. 
Yet he seems, too, to have thought of its being 
played, for he tells Montagu a month later that 
though he is not yet intoxicated enough with it 
to think it would do for the stage, yet he wishes 
to see it acted, — a wish which must have been 
a real one, — since he says further that he has 
written an epilogue for Mrs. Clive to speak in 
character. The postcript which is affixed to the 
printed piece contradicts the above utterances 
considerably, or, at all events, shows that fuller 
consideration has materially revised them. He 
admits that The Mysterious Mother would not be 
proper to appear upon the boards. " The sub- 
ject is so horrid, that I thought it would shock 
rather than give satisfaction to an audience. 
Still I found it so truly tragic in the two essen- 
tial springs of terror and pity, that I could not 
resist the impulse of adapting it to the scene, 
though it should never be practicable to produce 
it there." After his criticism to Madame du 
Deffand upon the plot, it is curious to find him 
later on claiming that "every scene tends to 

* Letters of Madame du Deffand, 1810, i, 211, n. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 229 

bring on the catastrophe, and [that] the story 
is never interrupted or diverted from its course." 
Notwithstanding its imaginative power, it is im- 
possible not to admit that the author's words as 
to the horror of the subject are just. But it is 
needless to linger longer upon a dramatic work 
which had such grave defects as to render its 
being acted impossible, and concerning the liter- 
ary merit of which there will always be different 
opinions. Byron spoke of it as "a tragedy of 
the highest order " ; Miss Burney shuddered at 
its very name ; while Lady Di Beauclerk illus- 
trated it enthusiastically with a series of seven 
designs in "sut-water"* for which the enrap- 
tured author erected a special gallery.f Mean- 
while, we may quote, from the close of the 
above postscript, a passage where Walpole is 
at his best. It is a rapid and characteristic 
apercu of tragedy in England : — 

"The excellence of our dramatic writers is 
by no means equal in number to the great men 
we have produced in other walks. Theatric 
genius lay dormant after Shakespeare; waked 
with some bold and glorious, but irregular and 

* I.e. — soot-water. There were Mr. Bentley in the Green Closet 
two landscapes in soot-water by at Strawberry, 
t See Chapter ix. 



230 Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 

often ridiculous flights in Dryden ; revived in 
Otway ; maintained a placid pleasing kind of 
dignity in Rowe, and even shone in his Jane 
Shore. It trod in sublime and classic fetters in 
Cato, but void of nature, or the power of affect- 
ing the passions. In Southerne it seemed a 
genuine ray of nature and Shakespeare ; but 
falling on an age still more Hottentot, was 
stifled in those gross and barbarous produc- 
tions, tragi-comedies. It turned to tuneful non- 
sense in the Mourning Bride ; grew stark mad 
in Lee ; whose cloak, a little the worse for wear, 
fell on Young ; yet in both was still a poet's 
cloak. It recovered its senses in Hughes and 
Fenton, who were afraid it should relapse, and 
accordingly kept it down with a timid, but ami- 
able hand — and then it languished. We have 
not mounted again above the two last." * 

The Castle of Otranto and the Historic Doubts 
were not printed by Mr. Robinson's latest suc- 
cessor, Mr. Kirgate. But the Strawberry Press 
had by this time resumed its functions, for The 
Mysteriotts Mother, of which 50 copies were 
printed in 1768, was issued from it. Another 
book which it produced in the same year 

* Works, 1798, i, 129. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 231 

was Cornelie, a youthful tragedy by Madame 
du Deffand's friend, President Henault. Wal- 
pole's sole reason for giving it the permanence 
of his type appears to have been gratitude to 
the venerable author, then fast hastening to 
the grave, for his kindness to himself in Paris. 
To Paris three-fourths of the impression went. 
More important reprints were Grammont's Me- 
moirs, a small quarto, and a series of Letters of 
Edward VI, both printed in 1772. The list for 
this period is completed by the loose sheets of 
Hoyland's Poems, 1769, and the well-known, 
but now rare Description of the Villa of Horace 
Walpole at Strawberry Hill, 100 copies of 
which were printed, six being on large paper. 
To the contents of this book, the ensuing chapter 
will be chiefly devoted. The present may fitly 
be concluded with a brief account of that always- 
debated passage in Walpole's life, his relations 
with the ill-fated Chatterton. 

In 1768, Chatterton, fretting in Mr. Lambert's 
office at Bristol, and casting about eagerly for 
possible clues to a literary life, had offered some 
specimens of the pseudo-Rowley to Dodsley of 
Pall Mall, but apparently without success. His 
next appeal was to Walpole, to whom he sent 



232 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

" a little poem of two or three stanzas, in alter- 
nate rhyme, on the death of Richard I," together 
with an intimation that the possessor could fur- 
nish him with accounts of a series of great 
painters that had flourished at Bristol. The 
packet was handed to Walpole by Mr. Bathoe, 
his bookseller (also notable as the keeper of the 
first circulating library in London) ; and, incred- 
ible to say, Walpole was instantly "drawn." He 
straightway dispatched to his unknown Bristol 
correspondent such a courteous note as he might 
have addressed to Zouch or Ducarel, express- 
ing interest, curiosity, and a desire for further 
particulars. Chatterton as promptly rejoined, 
forwarding more extracts from the Rowley 
poems. But he also, from Walpole's account 
of his letter, in part unbosomed himself, making 
revelation of his position as a widow's son and 
lawyer's apprentice, who had "a taste and turn 
for more elegant studies," which inclinations, he 
hinted, his illustrious correspondent might enable 
him to gratify. Upon this, perhaps not unnat- 
urally, Walpole's suspicions were aroused, the 
more so that Mason and Gray, to whom he 
showed the papers, declared them to be for- 
geries. He made, nevertheless, some private 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 233 

enquiry from an aristocratic relative at Bath as 
to Chatterton's antecedents, and found that, 
although his description of himself was ac- 
curate, no account of his character was forth- 
coming. He accordingly, by his own statement, 
wrote him a letter "with as much kindness 
and tenderness as if he had been his guardian," 
recommending him to stick to his profession, 
and adding, by way of postscript, that judges, 
to whom they had been submitted, were by 
no means satisfied as to the authenticity of 
his supposed MSS. Two letters from Chat- 
terton followed, — one (the first) dejected and 
seemingly acquiescent; the other curtly de- 
manding the restoration of his papers, the 
genuineness of which he re-affirmed. This 
second communication Walpole, then starting 
for Paris, overlooked. When he returned to 
England, he found waiting for him a third note 
which he seems to have also neglected. A few 
weeks afterwards arrived a fourth missive, the 
tone of which he regarded as "singularly im- 
pertinent." Snapping up both poems and let- 
ters in a pet, he scribbled a hasty reply, but, 
upon reconsideration, enclosed them to their 

writer without comment, and thought no more 
16 



234 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

of him or them. It was not until a year and a 
half later that Goldsmith told him, at the first 
Royal Academy dinner, that Chatterton had 
come to London and destroyed himself — an 
announcement which seems to have filled him 
with unaffected pity. "Several persons of 
honour and veracity," he says, "were present 
when I first heard of his death, and will attest 
my surprise and concern."* 

The apologists of the gifted and precocious 
Bristol boy, reading the above occurrences by 
the light of his deplorable end, have attributed 
to Walpole a more material part in his misfor- 
tunes than can justly be ascribed to him, and 
the first editor of Chatterton's Miscellanies did 
not scruple to emphasise the current gossip 
which represented Walpole as "the primary 
cause of his (Chatterton's) dismal catastrophe "f 
— an aspersion which drew from the Abbot of 

* In the above summary of the writes) that I can learn to esteem 

story we have preferred, notwith- that fastidious and unfeeling being, 

standing some difficulties, the ver- to whose insensibility we owe the 

sion given in Prof. D. Wilson's extinction of the greatest poetic 

Chattirton, 1869, which seems fair- luminary [Chatterton], if we may 

est to Walpole, and most plausible judge from the brightness of its 

in its interpretation of the facts. dawn, that ever rose in our, or 

t An example of this is fur- perhaps in any other hemisphere " 

nished by Miss Seward's Corre- {Seward to Hardinge, 21 Nov., 

spondence. " Do not expect (she 1787). 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 235 

Strawberry the lengthy letter on the subject 
which is printed in his Works* So long a 
vindication, if needed then, is scarcely needed 
now. Walpole, it is obvious, behaved very 
much as he might have been expected to be- 
have. He had been deceived, and he was as 
much annoyed with himself as with his deceiver. 
But he was not harsh enough to speak his mind 
frankly, nor benevolent enough to act the part 
of that rather rare personage, the ideal philan- 
thropist. If he had behaved less like an ordi- 
nary man of the world, — if he had obtained 
Chatterton's confidence instead of lecturing him, 
— if he had aided and counselled and protected 
him, — Walpole would have been different, and 
things might have been otherwise. As they 
were, upon the principle that "two of a trade 
can ne'er agree," it is difficult to conceive of any 
abiding alliance between the author of the fabri- 
cated Tragedy of ' Ailla and the author of the 
fabricated Castle of Otranto. 

* Works, 1798,^,205-45. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Old friends and new ; Walpole's nieces ; Mrs. Darner ; progress 
of Strawberry Hill ; festivities and later improvements ; " A 
Description" etc., 1774; the house and approaches ; Great 
Parlour, Waiting Room, China Room, and Yellow Bedcham- 
ber ; Breakfast Room; Green Closet and Blue Bedcham- 
ber; Armoury and Library ; Red Bedchamber, Holbein 
Chamber, and Star Chamber ; Gallery ; Round Drawing 
Room and Tribune; Great North Bedchamber; Great 
Cloister and Chapel; Walpole on Strawberry ; its damp- 
ness ; a drive from Twickenham to Piccadilly. 



16* 




VIII. 



IN 1774, when, according to its title-page, 
the Description of Strawberry Hill was 
printed, Walpole was a man of fifty-seven. 
During the period covered by the last chap- 
ter, many changes had taken place in his circle 
of friends. Mann and George Montagu (until, 
in October, 1770, his correspondence with the 
latter mysteriously ceased) were still the most 
frequent recipients of his letters, and next to 
these, Conway and Cole the antiquary. But 

239 



240 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

three of his former correspondents, Gray, his 
deaf neighbour at Marble Hill, Lady Suffolk,* 
and Lady Hervey (Pope's and Chesterfield's 
Molly Lepel, to whom he had written much from 
Paris), were dead. On the other hand, he had 
opened what promised to be a lengthy series of 
letters with Gray's friend and biographer, the 
Rev. William Mason, Rector of Aston in York- 
shire, with Madame du Deffand, and with the 
divorced Duchess of Grafton, who, in 1 769, had 
married his Paris friend, John Fitzpatrick, 
second Earl of Upper Ossory. There were 
changes, too, among his own relatives. By 
this time his eldest brother's widow, Lady Or- 
ford, had lost her second husband, Sewallis 
Shirley, and was again living, not very credit- 
ably, on the continent. Her son George, who 
since 1751 had been third Earl of Orford, and 
was still unmarried, was eminently unsatisfac- 
tory. He was shamelessly selfish, and by way 
of complicating the family embarrassments, had 
taken to the turf. Ultimately he had periodical 



* Henrietta Hobart, Countess Bedchamber at Strawberry. It 

Dowager of Suffolk, died in July, once belonged to Pope, who left 

1767. Her portrait by Charles it to Martha Blount, and it is en- 

Jervas, with Marble Hill in the graved in vol. ii of Cunningham's 

background, hung in the Green edition of the Letters. 



Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 241 

attacks of insanity, during which time it fell to 
Walpole's fate to look after his affairs. With 
Sir Edward Walpole, his second brother, he 
seems never to have been on terms of real cor- 
diality ; but he made no secret of his pride in 
his beautiful nieces, Edward Walpole's natural 
daughters, whose charms and amiability had 
victoriously triumphed over every prejudice 
which had been entertained against their birth. 
Laura, the eldest, had married a brother of Lord 
Albemarle, who afterwards became Bishop of 
Lichfield and Coventry ; Charlotte, the third, 
became Lady Huntingtower and afterwards 
Countess of Dysart; while Maria, the belle of 
the trio, was more fortunate still. After bury- 
ing her first husband, Lord Waldegrave, she 
had succeeded in fascinating H. R. H. William 
Henry, Duke of Gloucester, the King's own 
brother, and so contributing to bring about the 
Royal Marriage Act of 1772. They were mar- 
ried in 1 766 ; but the fact was not formally an- 
nounced to His Majesty until September, 1772.* 
Another marriage which must have given Wal- 

* "The Duke of Gloucester," — Dowager Waldegrave. He is 
wrote Gilly Williams to Selwyn, never from her elbow. This flat- 
as far back as December, 1764, — ters Horry Walpole not a little, 
" has professed a passion for the though he pretends to dislike it." 



242 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

pole almost as much pleasure was that of Gen- 
eral Conway's daughter to Mr. Darner, Lord 
Milton's eldest son, which took place in 1767. 
After the unhappy death of her husband, who 
shot himself in a tavern ten years later, Mrs. 
Darner developed considerable talents as a 
sculptor, and during the last years of Walpole's 
life was a frequent exhibitor at the Royal 
Academy. Non me Praxiteles finxit, at Anna 
Darner — wrote her admiring relative under 
one of her works, a wounded eagle in terra 
cotta,*and in the fourth volume of the Anec- 
dotes of Painti?ig, he likens "her shock dog, 
large as life," to such masterpieces of antique 
art as the Tuscan boar and the Barberini goat. 
It is time, however, to return to the story of 
Strawberry itself, as interrupted in Chapter v. 
In the introduction to Walpole's Description of 
1774 a considerable interval occurs between the 
building of the Refectory and Library in 1 753-4, 
and the subsequent erection of the Gallery, 
Round Tower, Great Cloister, and Cabinet or 
Tribune, which, already in contemplation in 
1759, were, according to the same authority, 

* The idea was borrowed from Milan: — "Non me Praxiteles, sed 
an inscription upon a statue at Marcus finxit Agrati ! " 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 243 

erected in 1760 and 1761. But here, as before, 
the date must rather be that of the commence- 
ment than the completion of these additions. 
In May, 1 763, he tells Cole that the Gallery is 
fast advancing, and in July, it is almost "in the 
critical minute of consummation." In August, 
"all the earth is begging to come and see it." 
A month afterwards, he is "keeping an inn; 
the sign, the 'Gothic Castle.'" His whole time 
is passed in giving tickets of admission to the 
Gallery, and hiding himself when it is on view. 
"Take my advice," he tells Montagu, "never 
build a charming house for yourself between 
London and Hampton Court: everybody will 
live in it but you." A year later he is giving a 
great fete to the French and Spanish Ambassa- 
dors, March, Selwyn, Lady Waldegrave, and 
other distinguished guests, which finishes in the 
new room. " During dinner there were French 
horns and clarionets in the Cloister," and after 
coffee, the guests were treated with "a syllabub 
milked under the cows that were brought to the 
brow of the terrace. Thence they went to the 
Printing-house, and saw a new fashionable 
French song printed. They drank tea in the 
Gallery, and at eight went away to Vauxhall." 



244 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

This last entertainment, the munificence of 
which, he says, the treasury of the Abbey will 
feel, took place in June, 1764; and it is not until 
four years later that we get tidings of any fresh 
improvements. In September, 1768, he tells 
Cole that he is going on with the Round 
Tower, or Chamber, at the end of the Gallery, 
which, in another letter, he says ''has stood still 
these five years," and he is besides "playing 
with the little garden on the other side of the 
road " which had come into his hands by Frank- 
lyn's death. In May of the following year he 
gives another magnificent festino at Strawberry 
which will almost mortgage it, but the Round 
Tower still progresses. In October, 1770, he is 
building again, in the intervals of gout; this 
time it is the Great Bedchamber — a "sort of 
room which he seems likely to inhabit much 
time together." Next year the whole piece- 
meal structure is rapidly verging to completion. 
"The Round Tower is finished, and magnifi- 
cent ; and the State Bedchamber proceeds 
fast." In June, he is writing to Mann from 
the delicious bow window of the former, with 
Vasari's Bianca Capello (which Mann had given 
him) over against him, and the setting sun be- 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 245 

hind, "throwing its golden rays all round." 
Further on, he is building a tiny brick chapel 
in the garden, mainly for the purpose of re- 
ceiving "two valuable pieces of antiquity," one 
being a painted window from Bexhill of Henry 
III and his Queen, given him by Lord Ashburn- 
ham, the other Cavalini's Tomb of Capoccio 
from the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore at 
Rome, which had been sent to him by Sir 
William (then Mr.) Hamilton, the English 
Minister at Naples. In August, 1772, the 
Great Bedchamber is finished, the house is 
complete, and he has "at last exhausted all 
his hoards and collections." Nothing remains 
but to make the Description and Catalogue, of 
which he had written to Cole as far back as 
1 768, and which, as already stated, he ultimately 
printed in 1774. 

As time went on, his fresh acquisitions obliged 
him to add several Appendices to this issue, 
and the copy before us, although dated 1774, 
has supplements, which bring the record down 
to 1 786. A fresh edition, in royal quarto, with 
twenty-seven plates, was printed in 1784,* and 

* From a passage in a letter of that this, though printed, was 
1787 to Lady Ossory.it appears withheld, on account of certain 



246 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

this, or an expansion of it, re- appears in Vol. ii 
of his Works. With these later issues we have 
little to do; but with the aid of that of 1774, 
may essay to give some brief account of the 
long, straggling, many-pinnacled building, with 
its round tower at the end, the east front 
of which is figured in the black-looking little 
vignette upon the title-page. The entrance was 
on the north side, from the Teddington and 
Twickenham road, here shaded by lofty trees ; 
and once within the embattled boundary wall, 
covered by this time with ivy, the first thing 
that struck the spectator was a small oratory 
inclosed by iron rails, with saint, altar, and holy- 
water basins designed en suite by Mr. Chute. 
On the right hand, — its gaily-coloured patches 
of flower-bed glimmering through a screen 
of iron work copied from the tomb of Roger 
Niger in old St. Paul's, — was the Abbot's, 
or Prior's Garden, which extended along the 
front of the house to the right of the principal 
entrance. This was down a small cloister to 
the left, at the side of the oratory, the chief 
decoration of which was a marble bas relief, in- 

difficulties caused by the over- "customers " (as he called them), 
weening curiosity of Walpole's the visitors to Strawberry. 




A Great Parlour or Refec- 
tory. 
B Waiting Room. 
C China Room. 

Little Parlour. 

Yellow Bedchamber, or 
Beauty Room. 

Hall and Staircase. 

Pantry. 
H Servants' Hall. 

Passage. 
K Great Cloister. 
L Wine Cellar. 
M Beer Cellar. 
N Kitchen. 
O Oratory. 



Strawberry Hill: Ground Plan — 1781. 



248 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

scribed " Dia Helionora," being, in fact, a por- 
trait of that Leonora D'Este who turned the 
head of Tasso. At the end of the little cloister 
was the door, which opened into "a small 
gloomy hall" united with the staircase, the 
balustrades of which, designed by Bentley, were 
decorated with antelopes, the Walpole sup- 
porters. In the well of the staircase was a 
Gothic lantern of japanned tin, also due to 
Bentley's fertile invention. Out of the little 
hall, if, instead of climbing the stairs, you turned 
into a little passage on your left, you found 
yourself in the Refectory or Great Parlour, 
where were accumulated the family portraits. 
Here, over the chimney-piece, was the conversa- 
tion piece by Sir Joshua Reynolds representing 
the triumvirate of Selwyn, Williams, and Lord 
Edgecumbe, already referred to in Chapter v; 
here also were Sir Robert Walpole and his two 
wives, Catherine Shorter and Maria Skerret; 
Robert Walpole the second, and his wife in a 
white riding-habit; Horace himself by Richard- 
son ; Dorothy Walpole, his aunt, who became 
Lady Townshend; his sister, Lady Maria 
Churchill, and a number of others. In the 
Waiting Room, into which the Refectory opened, 



Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 249 

was a stone head of John Dryden, whom Cathe- 
rine Shorter claimed as great uncle; next to 
this again was the China Closet, neatly lined 
with blue and white Dutch tiles, and having its 
ceiling painted by Miintz, after a villa at Fras- 
cati, with convolvuluses on poles. In the China 
Room, among great store of Sevres, and Chelsea, 
and oriental china, perhaps the greatest curiosity 
was a couple of Saxon tankards, exactly alike 
in form and size, which had been presented to 
Sir Robert Walpole at different times by the 
mistresses of the first two Georges, the Duchess 
of Kendal and the Countess of Yarmouth. To 
the left of the China Closet, with a bow window 
looking to the south, was the Little Parlour, 
which was hung with stone-coloured "gothic 
paper" in imitation of mosaic, and decorated 
with the "wooden prints " already referred to, 
the chiaroscuros of Jackson ; and at the side 
of this came the Yellow Bedchamber, known 
later, from its numerous feminine portraits, as 
the Beauty Room. The other spaces on the 
ground floor were occupied, towards the Prior's 
Garden, by the kitchens and servants' rooms, 
and, at the back, by the Great Cloister which 

went under the Gallery. 
17 



250 Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 

Returning- to the staircase where, in later 
years, hung Bunbury's original drawing* for his 
well-known caricature of " Richmond Hill," 
you entered the Breakfast Room on the first 
floor, the window of which looked towards the 
Thames. It was pleasantly furnished with blue 
paper, and blue and white linen, and contained 
many miniatures and portraits, notable among 
which were Carmontel's picture of Madame du 
Deffand and the Duchess de Choiseul.f a print 
of Madame du Deffand's room and cats, given 
by the President Henault, and a view by Ra- 
guenet of the Hotel de Carnavalet, the whilom 
residence of Madame de Sevigne. % 

* It was exhibited in the Royal scene the interior of Mad. du Def- 

Academy of 1781, and was Bun- fand's sitting-room. It was done 

bury's acknowledgement of the by M. de Carmontel, an amateur 

praise given him by Walpole in in the art of painting. He was 

the "Advertisement " to the fourth reader to the Prince of Conde and 

volume of the Anecdotes of Paint- author of several little Theatrical 

ing, 1 Oct., 1780. A copy of it was pieces." It is en graved in vol. viiof 

shewn at the Exhibition of English Walpole's Letters,by Cunningham 

Humourists in Art, June, 1889. 1857-59. Mad. du Deffand's por- 

t In a note to Madame du Def- trait was said to be extremely like; 

fand's Letters, 1810, i, 201, the that of the Duchess was not good, 
editor, Miss Berry, thus describes X " It is now the Musee Carna- 

this picture: — It was "a washed valet, and contains numberless 

drawing of Mad. la Duchesse de souvenirs of the Revolution, not- 

Choiseul and Mad. du Deffand, ably a collection of china plates, 

under their assumed characters bearing various dates, designs, and 

of grandmother and grand-daugh- inscriptions applicable to the Reign 

ter; Mad. de Choiseul giving of Terror " {Century Magazine, 

Mad. du Deffand a doll. The Feb., 1890, p. 600). 




A Round Drawing Room. 

B Cabinet, or Tribune. 

C Great North Bedchamber. 

D Gallery. 

E Holbein Chamber. 

F Library. 

G Beauclerk Closet, or Cabinet. 

H Armoury. 

I China Closets. 

K Back Stairs. 

L Passage. 

M Star Chamber. 

N Red Bedchamber. 

O Blue Bedchamber. 

P Breakfast Room. 

Q Green Closet. 



Strawberry Hill: Principal Floor — 1781. 



252 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

The Breakfast Room opened into the Green 
Closet, over the door of which was a picture by 
Samuel Scott, the " English Canaletti," of 
Pope's house at Twickenham, showing the 
wings added after the poet's death by Sir 
William Stanhope. On the same side of the 
room hung Hogarth's portrait of Sarah Mal- 
colm the murderess, painted on the day pre- 
ceding her execution in Fleet Street* Here 
also was "Mr. Thomas Gray; etched from his 
shade [silhouette] ; by Mr. W. Mason." There 
were many other portraits in this room, besides 
some water colours by Horace himself. In a 
line with the Green Closet, and looking east, 
was the Library ; and at the back of it the 
Blue Bedchamber, the toilette of which was 
worked by Mrs. Clive, who since her retire- 
ment from the stage in 1 769, had lived wholly 
at Twickenham. The chief pictures in this 
room were Eckardt's portraits of Gray in a 
Vandyke dress and of Walpole himself in sim- 
ilar attire.f There were also by the same 

* Both these pictures are in ex- tBoth these are engraved in 

istence. The Scott belongs to Cunningham's edition of the 

Lady Freake, and was exhibited Letters, the former in vol. 

in the Pope Loan Museum of vi, p. 465, the latter in vol. ix, 

1888; the Hogarth, in 1879, was p. 528. 
at Mr. Cox's in Pall Mall. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 253 

artist pictures of Walpole's father and mother, 
and of General Conway and his wife Lady 
Ailesbury. 

Facing the Blue Bedchamber was the Ar- 
moury, a vestibule of three Gothic arches, in 
the left-hand corner of which was the door 
opening into the Library, a room twenty-eight 
feet by sixteen, lighted by a large window look- 
ing to the east and by two smaller rose-windows 
at the sides. The books, arranged in Gothic 
arches of pierced work, went all round it. The 
chimney-piece was imitated from the tomb of John 
of Eltham in Westminster Abbey, and the stone 
work from another tomb at Canterbury. Over 
the chimney-piece was a picture (which is en- 
graved in the Anecdotes of Painting) represent- 
ing the marriage of Henry VI. Walpole and 
Bentley had designed the ceiling, a gorgeous 
heraldic medley surrounding a central Walpole 
shield. Above the bookcases were pictures. One 
of the greatest treasures of the room was a clock 
given by Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn. Of the 
books it is impossible to speak in detail. No- 
ticeable among them, however, was a Thuanus 
in fourteen volumes, a very complete set of 

Hogarth's prints, and all the original drawings 
17* 



254 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

for the s£des Walpoliancz. Vertue and Faith- 
orne were also largely represented. Among 
special copies were the identical Iliad and 
Odyssey from which Pope made his translations 
of Homer, a volume containing Bentley's orig- 
inal designs for Gray's Poems, and a note-book 
of sketches by Jacques Callot. In a rosewood 
case in this room was also a fine collection of 
coins, which included the rare silver medal struck 
by Gregory XIII, on the Massacre of St. Bar- 
tholomew. 

Concerning the Red Bedchamber, the Star 
Chamber, and the Holbein Chamber, which 
intervened between the rest of the first floor 
and the latest additions — there is little to say. 
In the Red Chamber, the most memorable 
things were some pencil sketches of Pope and 
his parents by Cooper and the elder Richard- 
son. In the Holbein Chamber, so called from 
a number of copies on oil-paper by Vertue from 
the drawings of Holbein in Queen Catharine's 
Closet at Kensington, were two of those "curios- 
ities" which represent the Don Saltero, or 
Madame Tussaud side of Strawberry, viz., a 
comb which was said to have belonged to Mary, 
Queen of Scots and (later) the red hat of 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 255 

Cardinal Wolsey. The pedigree of the hat, it 
must, however, be admitted, was unimpeachable. 
It had been found in the great wardrobe by 
Bishop Burnet when Clerk of the Closet. From 
him it passed to his son the Judge (author of 
that curious squib on Harley known as the His- 
tory of Robert Powel the Puppet- Show Maii) y 
and thence to the Countess Dowager of Albe- 
marle, who gave it to Walpole. A carpet in 
this room was worked by Mrs. Clive, who seems 
to have been a most industrious decorator of 
her friend's mansion museum.* The Star 
Chamber was but an ante-room studded with 
gold stars in mosaic, the chief glory of which 
was a bust of Henry VII by Torregiano. 

With these three rooms, the first floor of 
Strawberry, as it existed previous to the erection 
of the additions mentioned in the beginning of 
this chapter, namely, the Gallery, the Round 
Tower, the Tribune, and the Great North Bed- 
chamber, came to an end. But it was in these 
newer parts of the house that some of its rarest 

* Walpole wrote an epilogue — their names in the Tete-d-7'etes as 

not a very good one — for Mrs. "Mrs. Heidelberg" (Clive's part 

Clive when she quitted the stage, in the Clandestine Marriage') and 

and in the same year, 1769, the "Baron Otranto." 
Tcnvn and County Magazine linked 



256 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

objects of art were assembled. The Gallery, 
which was entered from a gloomy little passage 
in front of the Holbein Chamber, was a really 
spacious room, fifty-six feet by fifteen and lighted 
from the south by five high windows. Between 
these were tables laden with busts, bronzes, and 
urns ; on the opposite side fronting the windows, 
were recesses, finished with gold network over 
looking-glass, between which stood couch-seats 
covered, like the rest of the room, with crimson 
Norwich damask. The ceiling was copied from 
one of the side aisles of Henry VII's Chapel; 
the great door at the western end, which led into 
the Round Tower, was taken from the north 
door of St. Alban's. A long carpet, made at 
Moorfields, traversed the room from end to end. 
In one of the recesses, that to the left of the 
chimney-piece, which was designed by Mr. Chute 
and another, stood one of the finest surviving 
pieces of Greek sculpture, the Boccapadugli 
eagle, found in the precinct of the Baths of 
Caracalla, a chefd'oeuvre from which Gray is said 
to have borrowed "the ruffled plumes and flag- 
ging wing " of the Progress of Poesy ; to the 
right was a noble bust in basalt of Vespasian, 
which had been purchased from the Ottoboni col- 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 257 

lection. Of the pictures it is impossible to speak 
at large ; but two of the most notable were Sir 
George Villiers, the father of the Duke of Buck- 
ingham, and Mabuse's Marriage of Henry VII 
and Elizabeth of York. Of Walpole's own 
relatives, there were portraits by Ramsay of his 
nieces, Mrs. Keppel (the Bishop's wife) and Lady 
Dysart, and of Lady Waldegrave (now Duchess 
of Gloucester) by Reynolds. There were also 
portraits of Henry Fox, Lord Holland, of 
George Montagu, of Lord Waldegrave, and of 
his uncle, Lord Walpole of Wolterton.* 

Issuing through the great door of the Gallery, 
and passing on the left a glazed closet contain- 
ing a quantity of china which had once be- 
longed to Walpole's mother, a couple of steps 
brought you into the pleasant Drawing Room in 
the Round Tower, the bow window of which, 
already mentioned, looked to the south-west. 
Like the Gallery this room was hung with Nor- 
wich damask. Its chief glory was the picture 
of Bianca Capello, of which Walpole had 
written to Mann. To the left of this room, 
at the back of the Gallery, and consequently 

* Horatio, brother of Sir Robert 1 757. His Memoirs were published 
Walpole, created Baron Walpole by Coxe in 1802. 
of Wolterton in 1756. He died in 



258 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

in the front of the house, was the Cabinet, 
or Tribune, a curious square chamber with 
semicircular recesses, in two of which, to the 
north and west, were stained windows. In the 
roof, which was modelled on the chapter house 
at York, was a star of yellow glass throwing a 
soft golden glow over all the room. Here Wal- 
pole had amassed his choicest treasures, minia- 
tures by Oliver and Cooper, enamels by Petitot 
and Zincke,* bronzesfrom Italy, ivory bas-reliefs, 
seal-rings and reliquaries, caskets and cameos 
and filigree-work. Here, with Madame du 
Deffand's letter inside it, was the " round white 
snuffbox" with Madame de Sevigne's portrait; 
here, carven with masks and flies and grass- 
hoppers, was Cellini's silver bell from the Leo- 
nati Collection, at Parma, a masterpiece against 
which he had exchanged all his collection of 
Roman coins with the Marquis of Rockingham. 
A bronze bust of Caligula with silver eyes; a 
missal with miniatures by Raphael ; a dagger 

* "The chief boast of my collec- The works I possess of Isaac and 

tion," he told Pinkerton, " is the Peter Oliver are the best extant, and 

portraits of eminent and remark- those I bought in Wales for 300 

able persons, particularly the min- guineas [i. e.,the Digby Family in 

iatures, and enamels, which, so far the Breakfast Room] are as well 

as I can discover, are superior to preserved as when they came from 

any other collection whatever. the pencil" {Walpoliana, ii, 157). 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 259 

of Henry VIII,* and a mourning ring given at 
the burial of Charles I, were among the other 
show objects of the Tribune, the riches of which 
occupy more space in their owner's catalogue 
than any other part of his collections. 

With the Great North Bedchamber, which 
adjoined the Tribune, and filled the remaining 
space at the back of the Gallery, the account 
of Strawberry Hill, as it existed in 1774, comes 
to an end, for the Green Chamber in the 
Round Tower over the Drawing Room, and 
"Mr. Walpole's Bedchamber, two pair of stairs" 
(which contained the Warrant for beheading 
King Charles I inscribed "Major Charta," so 
often referred to by Walpole's biographers), 
may be dismissed without further notice. The 
Beauclerk Closet, a later addition, will be de- 
scribed in its proper place. Over the chimney- 
piece in the Great North Bedchamber was a 
large picture of Henry VIII and his children, 
a recent purchase, afterwards remanded to the 
staircase to make room for a portrait of Cather- 
ine of Braganza, sent from Portugal previous to 
her marriage with Charles II. Fronting the 

* At the sale in 1842, King actor, who also became the fortu- 
Henry's dagger was purchased nate possessor for £2\ of Car- 
for^54 12s. by Charles Kean the dinal Wolsey's hat. 



260 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

bed was a head of Niobe, by Guido, which in 
its turn subsequently made way for la belle 
Jennings* Among the pictures on the north 
or window side of the room was the original 
sketch by Hogarth of the Beggar s Opera, 
which Walpole had purchased at the sale of 
Rich, the fortunate manager who produced 
Gay's masterpiece at Lincoln's Inn Fields. It 
was exhibited at Manchester in 1857, being 
then the property of Mr. Willett, who had 
bought it at the Strawberry Hill sale of 1842. 
Another curious oil painting in this room was 
the Rehearsal of an Opera by the Riccis, which 
included portraits of Nicolini (of Spectator 
celebrity), Mrs. Tofts, and Margherita. In a 
nook by the window there was a glazed china 
closet, with a number of minor curiosities, among 
which were conspicuous the speculum of cannel 
coal with which Dr. Dee was in the habit of 
gulling his votaries,f and an agate puncheon 
with Gray's arms which his executors had 
presented to Walpole. 



* See ch. i. Betty Germaine. She gave it to 

t "Doctor Dee's black stone was the last Duke of Argyle, and 

named in the catalogue of the col- his son, Lord Frederic, to me." 

lection of the Earls of Peterbor- ( Walpole to Lady Ossory, 12 Jan., 

ough, whence it went to Lady 1782). 



Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 261 

A few external objects claim a word. In the 
Great Cloister under the Gallery was the blue 
and white china tub in which had taken place 
that tragedy of the "pensive Selima" referred 
to in Chapter v as having prompted the muse 
of Gray.* The Chapel in the Garden has 
already been sufficiently described. f In the 
Flower Garden across the road was a cottage 
which Walpole had erected upon the site 
of the building once occupied by Franklyn 
the printer, and which he used as a place of 
refuge when the tide of sightseers became over- 
powering. It included a Tea Room containing 
a fair collection of china, and hung with green 
paper and engravings ; and a little white and 
green Library of which the principal ornament 
was a half-length portrait of Milton. A por- 
trait of Lady Hervey by Ramsay was after- 
wards added to its decorations. 

Many objects of interest, as must be obvious, 
have remained undescribed in the foregoing 

* This was afterwards moved to roomy, for in 1 759, the Duchesses 

the Little Cloister at the entrance, of Hamilton and Richmond and 

where it appears in the later Cata- Lady Ailesbury sat in it at once, 

logue. "There never was so pretty a 

t Not far from the Chapel was "a sight as to see them all sitting on 

large seat in the form of a shell, the shell" — says the delighted 

carved in oak, from a design by Abbot of Strawberry. 
Mr. Bentley." It must have been 



262 Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 

account, and those who seek for further in- 
formation concerning what its owner called his 
" paper fabric and assemblage of curious trifles " 
must consult either the catalogue of 1774 itself, 
or that later and definitive version of it which 
is reprinted in Volume ii of the Works (pp. 
393-516). The intention has here been in the 
main to lay stress upon those articles which 
bear more directly upon Walpole's biography. 
It will also be observed that, during the pro- 
longed progress of the house towards comple- 
tion, his experience and his views considerably 
enlarged, and the pettiness and artificiality of 
his first improvement disappeared. The house 
never lost, and never could lose, its invertebrate 
character; but the Gallery, the Round Tower, 
and the North Bedchamber were certainly con- 
ceived in a more serious and even spacious spirit 
of Gothicism than any of the early additions. 
That it must, still, have been confined and need- 
lessly gloomy, may be allowed ; but as a set-off 
to some of those accounts which insist so per- 
tinaciously upon its "paltriness," its "architec- 
tural solecisms" and its lack of beauty and sub- 
limity, it is only fair to recall a few sentences 
from the preface which its owner prefixed to the 



Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 263 

Description of 1784. It was designed, he 
says of the catalogue, to exhibit "specimens of 
Gothic architecture, as collected from standards 
in cathedrals and chapel-tombs," and to show 
"how they may be applied to chimney pieces, 
ceilings, windows, balustrades, loggias, etc." 
Elsewhere he characterises the building itself 
as candidly as any of its critics. He admits its 
diminutive scale and its unsubstantial character 
(he calls it himself, as we have seen, a " paper 
fabric"); and he confesses to the incongruities 
arising from an antique design and modern dec- 
orations. "In truth," he concludes, "I did not 
mean to make my house so Gothic as to exclude 
convenience, and modern refinements in luxury. 
. . . It was built to please my own taste, and 
in some degree to realise my own visions. I 
have specified what it contains ; could I describe 
the gay but tranquil scene where it stands, and 
add the beauty of the landscape to the romantic 
cast of the mansion, it would raise more pleas- 
ing sensations than a dry list of curiosities can 
excite ; at least the prospect would recall the 
good humour of those, who might be disposed 
to condemn the fantastic fabric, and to think it 
a very proper habitation of, as it was the scene 



264 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

that inspired, the author of the Castle of 
Otranto."* As one of his critics has observed, 
this tone disarms criticism ; and it is needless 
to accumulate proofs of peculiarities which are 
not denied by the person most concerned. 

In spite of its charming situation, Strawberry 
Hill was emphatically a summer residence, and 
there is more than one account in Walpole's let- 
ters of the sudden floods which, when Thames 
flowed with a fuller tide than now, occasionally 
surprised the inhabitants of the pleasant-looking 
villas along its banks. It was decidedly damp, 
and its gouty owner had sometimes to quit it 
precipitately for Arlington Street, where, he 
says, "after an hour," he revives "like a mem- 
ber of parliament's wife." His best editor, Mr. 
Peter Cunningham, whose knowledge as an 
antiquary was unrivalled, — for was he not the 
author of the Handbook of London? — has 
amused himself, in an odd corner of one of his 
prefaces, by retracing the route taken in these 
townward flights. The extract is so packed 
with suggestive memories that no excuse is 
needed for reproducing it (with a few necessary 
notes) as the tailpiece of the present chapter. 

* Works, 1 798, ii, 395-8. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 265 

"At twelve his [Walpole's] light bodied 
chariot was at the door with his English coach- 
man and his Swiss valet ... In a few minutes 
he left Lord Radnor's villa to the right, rolled 
over the grotto of Pope, saw on his left Whitton, 
rich with recollections of Kneller and Argyll, 
passed Gumley House, one of the country seats 
of his father's opponent and his own friend, 
Pulteney, Earl of Bath, and Kendal House,* 
the retreat of the mistress of George I, Ermen- 
gard de Schulenberg, Duchess of Kendal. At 
Sion, the princely seat of the Percys, the Sey- 
mours and the Smithsons, he turned into the 
Hounslow Road, left Sion on his right, and 
Osterley, not unlike Houghton, on his left, and 
rolled through Brentford — 

' Brentford, the Bishopric of Parson Home,' 

then, as now, infamous for its dirty streets and 
famous for its white-legged chickens.f Quit- 
ting Brentford, he approached the woods that 
concealed the stately mansion of Gunnersbury, 
built by Inigo Jones and Webb, and then in- 
habited by the Princess Amelia, the last sur- 

* Kendal House now no longer exists. 

t " Brandford 's tedious town, 

For dirty streets, and white-leg'd chickens known." 

Gay's Journey to Exeter. 
18 



266 Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 

viving child of King George II. Here he was 
often a visitor, and seldom returned without 
beine a winner at silver loo. At the Pack Horse 
on Turnham Green he would, when the roads 
were heavy, draw up for a brief bait. Starting 
anew, he would pass a few red brick houses on 
both sides, then the suburban villas of men well to 
do in the Strand and Charing Cross. At Ham- 
mersmith, he would leave the church * on his 
right, call on Mr. Fox at Holland House, look 
at Campden House with recollections of Sir 
Baptist Hickes, and not without an ill-sur- 
pressed wish to transfer some little part of it to 
his beloved Strawberry. He was now at Ken- 
sington Church, then as it still is, an ungraceful 
structure,! but rife with associations which he 
would at times relate to the friend he had with 
him. On his left he would leave the gates of 
Kensington Palace, rich with reminiscences 
connected with his father and the first Han- 
overian kings of this country. On his right he 
would quit the red brick house in which the 

* Hammersmith church was the Virgin, in Kensington High 

rebuilt in 1882-3. Street, at which Macaulay, in his 

t The (with all due deference later days, was a regular attendant, 

to Mr. Cunningham) quaint and has now (1890) given place to a 

picturesque old Church of St. Mary larger and more modern edifice. 



Horace WalpoLe ; A Memoir. 267 

Duchess of Portsmouth lived, and after a drive 
of half a mile (skirting a heavy brick wall), 
reach Kingston House replete with stories of 
Elizabeth Chudleigh, the Bigamist maid of 
Honour, and Duchess-Countess of Kingston 
and Bristol. At Knightsbridge (even then the 
haunt of highwaymen less gallant than Mac- 
lean) he passed on his left the little chapel * in 
which his father was married. At Hyde Park 
Corner he saw the Hercules Pillars ale-house 
of Fielding and Tom Jones,f and at one door 
from Park Lane would occasionally call on old 
' Q ' for the sake of Selwyn, who was often 
there. J The trees which now grace Piccadilly 
were in the Green Park in Walpole's day ; they 
can recollect Walpole, and that is something. 
On his left, the sight of Coventry House would 
remind him of the Gunnings, and he would tell 
his friend the story of the 'beauties,' with which 
(short storyteller as he was) he had not com- 
pleted when the chariot turned into Arlington 
Street on the right, or down Berkeley Street 

* Restored and remodelled in east of Apsley House, "on the 

1861, and now the Church of the site of what is now the pavement 

Holy Trinity. opposite Lord Willoughby's." 

t The Hercules Pillars, where % The Duke of Queensberry's 

Squire Western put up his horses house was afterwaids 138 and 

when he came to town, stood just 139 Piccadilly. 



268 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

into Berkeley Square, on the left." * In these 
last lines Mr. Cunningham anticipates our story, 
for in 1774, Walpole had not yet taken up his 
residence in Berkeley Square. 

* Letters by Cunningham, 1857-9, ix, xx — xxi. 





<— H^SS^a-f^^^Z"!*-*^- 



i8* 



CHAPTER IX. 

Occupations and correspondence j literary work ; Jcphson and 
the stage ; " Nature will Prevail " y issues from the Straw- 
berry Press ; fourth volume of the "Anecdotes of Painting" j 
the Beauclerk Tower and Lady Di. j George, third Earl of 
Orford ; sale of the Houghton pictures ; moves to Berkeley 
Square ; last visit to Madame du Deffand ; her death ; 
themes for letters j death of Sir Horace Mann j Pinkerton, 
Madame de Genlis, Miss Burney, Hannah More ; Mary and 
Agnes Berry ; their residence at Twickenham j becomes fourth 
Earl of Orford ; " Epitaphium vivi Aucloris " ; the Berrys 
again ; death of Marshal Conway ; last letter to Lady Os- 
sory ; dies at Berkeley Square, 2 March, ijgj ; his fortune 
and will j the fate of Strawberry. 




IX. 



AFTER the completion of Strawberry Hill 
and the printing of the Catalogue, Wal- 
pole's life grows comparatively barren of events. 
There are still four volumes of his Correspon- 
dence, but they take upon them more and 
more the nature of nouvelles a la main, and 
are less fruitful in personal traits. Between 
his books and his prints, his time passes 
agreeably, "but will not do to relate." In- 
deed, from this period until his death in 1 797, 

273 



274 Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 

the most notable occurrences in his history 
are his friendship with the Miss Berrys in 
1787-8, and his belated accession to the 
Earldom of Orford. Both at Strawberry and 
Arlington Street, his increasing years and his 
persistent malady condemn him more and more 
to seclusion and retirement. He is most at 
Strawberry, despite its dampness, for in the 
country he holds "old useless people ought to 
live." " If you were not to be in London," he 
tells Lady Ossory in April, 1774, "the spring 
advances so charmingly, I think I should scarce 
go thither. One is frightened with the inunda- 
tion of breakfasts and balls that are coming on. 
Every one is engaged to everybody for the next 
three weeks, and if one must hunt for a needle, 
I had rather look for it in a bottle of hay in the 
country than in a crowd." " By age and situa- 
tion," he writes from Strawberry in September, 
"at this time of the year I live with nothing 
but old women. They do very well for me who 
have little choice left, and who rather prefer 
common nonsense to wise nonsense — the only 
difference I know between old women and old 
men. I am out of all politics, and never think 
of elections, which I think I should hate even 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 275 

if I loved politics ; just as if I loved tapestry I 
do not think I could talk over the manufacture 
of worsteds. Books I have almost done with 
too ; at least, read only such as nobody else 
would read. In short, my way of life is too 
insipid to entertain anybody but myself, and 
though I am always employed, I must own I 
think I have given up every thing in the world 
only to be busy about the most arrant trifles." 
His London life was not greatly different. 
"How should I see or know anything?" he 
says a year later, apologising for his dearth of 
news. " I seldom stir out of my house [at Ar- 
lington Street] before seven in the evening, see 
very few persons, and go to fewer places, make 
no new acquaintance, and have seen most of 
my old wear out. Loo at Princess Amelie's, 
loo at Lady Hertford's, are the capital events of 
my history, and a Sunday alone, at Strawberry, 
my chief entertainment. All this is far from 
gay ; but as it neither gives me enmii, nor 
lowers my spirits, it is not uncomfortable, and I 
prefer it to being deplace in younger company." 
Such is his account of his life in 1774-5, when 
he is nearing sixty, and it probably represents 
it with sufficient accuracy. But a trifling inci- 



276 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

dent easily stirs him into unwonted vivacity. 
While he is protesting that he has nothing to 
say, his letters grow under his pen, and, almost 
as a necessary consequence of his leisure, they 
become more frequent and more copious. In 
the edition of Cunningham, up to September, 
1774, they number fourteen hundred and fifty. 
Speaking roughly, this represents a period of 
nearly forty years. During the two-and-twenty 
years that remained to him, he managed to 
swell them by what was, proportionately, a far 
greater number. The last letter given by Cun- 
ningham is marked 2665, and this enumeration 
does not include a good many letters and frag- 
ments of letters belonging to this later period, 
which were published in 1865 in Miss Berry's 
Journals and Correspondence. Nevertheless, as 
stated above, they more and more assume what 
he somewhere calls "their proper character of 
newspapers." 

During the remainder of his life, they were 
his chief occupation, and his gout was sel- 
dom so severe but that he could make shift to 
scribble a line to his favourite correspondents, 
calling in his printer Kirgate in cases of ex- 
tremity. Of literature generally he professed 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 277 

to have taken final leave. "I no longer care 
about fame," he tells Mason in 1774: "I have 
done being an author." Nevertheless, the 
Short Notes piously chronicle the production 
of more than one trifle, which are reprinted in 
his Works. When, in the above year, shortly 
after Goldsmith's death, Lord Chesterfield 
published his letters to his son, Walpole began 
a parody of that famous performance in a Series 
of Letters from a Mother to her Daughter, with 
the general title of the Whole Duty of Woman. 
He grew tired of the idea too soon to enable us 
to judge what his success might have been with a 
subject which, in his hands, should have been di- 
verting as a satire, for, although he was a warm 
admirer of Chesterfield's parts, as he had shown 
in his character of him in the Royal and Noble 
Authors, he was thoroughly aware of the artifi- 
ciality of what he calls his " impertinent insti- 
tutes of education."* Another work of this year 
was a reply to some remarks by Mr. Masters in 
the Archceologia upon the old subject of the His- 

* It was his good sense rather friendly patronage [ i. e., of the 

than his inclination that made him earl ] was returned with ungrateful 

condemn one with whom he had rudeness by the proud pedant; 

many points of sympathy. Speak- and men smiled, without being 

ing of the quarrel of Johnson and surprised, at seeing a bear worry 

Chesterfield, he says, " The his dancing master." 



278 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

toric Doubts, which calls for no further notice. 
But early in 1 775 he was persuaded into writing 
an epilogue for the Braganza of Captain Robert 
Jephson, a maiden tragedy of the Venice Pre- 
served order which was produced at Drury Lane 
in February of that year with considerable suc- 
cess. In a correspondence which ensued with the 
author, Walpole delivered himself of his views on 
tragedy for the benefit of Mr. Jephson, who acted 
upon them, but not (as his Mentor thought) 
with conspicuous success, in his next attempt, 
the Law of Lombardy. Jephson's third play, 
however, the Count of Narbonne, which was 
well received in 1781, had a natural claim upon 
Walpole's good opinion, since it was based upon 
the Castle of Otrarito. Besides the above letters 
on tragedy, Walpole wrote, "in 1775 and 
1776," a rather longer paper on comedy, which 
is printed with them in the second volume of 
his works. He held, as he says, "a good 
comedy, the chef d'ceuvre of human genius," and 
it is manifest that his keenest sympathies were 
on the side of comic art. His remarks upon 
Congreve are full of just appreciation. Yet, 
although he mentions the School for Scandal 
(which by the way shows that he must have 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 2 79 

written rather later than the dates given above), 
he makes no reference to the most recent de- 
velopment, in She Stoops to Conquer, of the 
school of humour and character, and he seems 
rather to pose as the advocate of that genteel 
or sentimental comedy which Foote and Gold- 
smith and Sheridan had striven to drive from 
the English stage. When his prejudices are 
aroused he is seldom a safe guide, and in addi- 
tion to his personal contempt for Goldsmith,* 
that writer had irritated him by his reference 
to the Albemarle Street Club, to which many 
of his friends belonged. It was an additional 
offence that the ''Miss Biddy (originally Miss 
Rachael) Buckskin " of the comedy was said to 
stand for Mrs. Rachael Lloyd, long housekeeper 
at Kensington Palace, and a member of the club 
well known both to himself and to Madame du 
Deffand. 

In the second of the letters to Mr. Jephson, 
Walpole refers to his own efforts at comedy, 
and implies that he had made attempts in this 
direction even before the date of The Mysterious 
Mother. He had certainly the wit, and much 

* "Silly Dr. Goldsmith" — he once or twice a fit of parts" — he 
calls him to Cole in April, 1773. says again to Mason in October, 
"Goldsmith was an idiot; with 1776. 



280 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

of the gift of direct expression, which comedy 
requires. But nothing of these earlier essays 
appears to have survived, and the only dramatic 
effort included among his Works (his tragedy 
excepted) is the little piece entitled Nature will 
Prevail, which, with its fairy machinery, has 
something of the character of such earlier pro- 
ductions of Mr. W. S. Gilbert as the Palace of 
Truth. This he wrote in 1773, and according 
to the Short Notes, sent it anonymously to the 
elder Colman, then manager of Covent Garden. 
Colman (he says) was much pleased with it, but 
regarding it as too short for a farce, wished to 
have it enlarged. This, however, its author 
thought too much trouble " for so slight and 
extempore a performance." Five years after, it 
was produced at the little theatre in the Hay- 
market, and being admirably acted — says the 
Biographia Dramatica — met with considerable 
applause. But it is obviously one of those 
works to which the verdict of Goldsmith's critic, 
that it would have been better if the author had 
taken more pains, may judiciously be applied. 
It is more like a sketch for a farce than a farce 
itself, and it is not finished enough for a pro- 
verbe. Yet the dialogue is in parts so good 



Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 281 

that one almost regrets the inability of the 
author to nerve himself for an enterprise de 
longue haleine. 

Between 1774 and 1780 the Strawberry Hill 
Press still now and then showed signs of vitality. 
^ n I 775> it printed as a loose sheet some verses 
by Charles James Fox, celebrating, as Amoret, 
that lover of the Whigs, the beautiful Mrs. 
Crewe, and three hundred copies of an Eclogue 
by Mr. Fitzpatrick, entitled Dorinda, which 
contains the couplet, — 

"And oh! what bliss, when each alike is pleased, 
The hand that squeezes, and the hand that's squeezed." 

These were followed, in 1778, by the Sleep 
Walker, a comedy from the French of 
Madame du Deffand's friend Pont de Veyle, 
translated by Lady Craven, afterwards Mar- 
gravine of Anspach, and played for a charitable 
purpose at Newbury. A year later came the 
vindication of his conduct to Chatterton, already 
mentioned in Chapter vii ; and after this a 
sheet of verse by Mr. Charles Miller to Lady 
Horatia Waldegrave, * a daughter of the 

* One of the three beautiful Chewton ; Maria, afterwards 
sisters painted by Reynolds, — Countess of Euston; and Ho- 
Laura, afterwards Viscountess ratia, who married Captain Hugh 

19 



282 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

Duchess of Gloucester by her first husband. 
The last work of any importance was the 
fourth volume of the Anecdotes of Painting, 
which had been printed as far back as 1770, 
but was not issued until Oct., 1780. This delay, 
the Advertisement informs us, arose " from 
motives of tenderness." The author was "un- 
willing (he says) to utter even gentle censures, 
which might wound the affections, or offend the 
prejudices, of those related to the persons whom 
truth forbad him to commend beyond their 
merits."* But despite his unwillingness to 
"dispense universal panegyric," and the limi- 
tation of his theme to living professors, he 
manages, in the same advertisement, to dis- 
tribute a fair amount of praise to some of his 
particular friends. Of H. W. Bunbury, the 
husband of Goldsmith's " Little Comedy," he 
says that he is the "second Hogarth," and the 
"first imitator who ever fully equalled his 
original," which is sheer extravagance. He 



Conway. " Sir Joshua Reynolds * He was not successful as re- 
gets avaricious in his old age. gards Hogarth, whose widow was 
My picture of the young ladies sorely and justly wounded by his 
Waldegrave is doubtless very censure of Sigismunda, which is 
fine and graceful; but it cost said to have been a portrait of her- 
me Soo guineas " ( Walpoliana, self. The picture is now in the 
ii, 157). National Gallery. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 283 

lauds the miniature copying of Lady Lucan, 
as almost depreciating the "exquisite works" 
of the artists she copies — to wit, Cooper and 
the Olivers ; and he speaks of Lady Di. Beau- 
clerk's drawings as "not only inspired by 
Shakespeare's insight into nature, but by the 
graces and taste of Grecian artists." After this, 
the comparison of Mrs. Darner with Bernini 
seems almost tame. Yet her works "from the 
life are not inferior to the antique, and those . . . 
were not more like." One can scarcely blame 
Walpole severely for this hearty backing of the 
friends who had added so much to the attrac- 
tions of his Gothic castle ; but the value of his 
criticisms, in many other instances sound enough, 
is certainly impaired by his loyalty to the old- 
new practice of " log-rolling." 

Lady Di. Beauclerk, whose illustrations to 
Dryden's Fables are still a frequent item in 
second-hand catalogues, has a personal con- 
nection with Strawberry through the curious 
little closet bearing her name, which, with the 
assistance of Mr. Essex, a Gothic architect 
from Cambridge, Walpole in 1776-8 managed 
to tuck in between the Cabinet and the Round 
Tower. It was built on purpose to hold the 



284 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

"seven incomparable drawings" executed in 
a fortnight, which Her Ladyship prepared to 
illustrate The Mysterious Mother. These were 
the designs to which he refers in the Anecdotes 
of Painting ; and, in a letter to Mann, says 
could not be surpassed by Guido and Salvator 
Rosa. They were hung on Indian blue dam- 
ask, and Clive's friend, Miss Pope, the actress, 
when she dined at Strawberry, was affected 
by them to such a degree that she shed tears, 
although she did not know the story, an anec- 
dote which may be regarded either as a genuine 
compliment to Lady Di., or a merely histrionic 
tribute to her entertainer. "The drawings," 
Walpole says, "do not shock and disgust, like 
their original, the tragedy," but they were not to 
be shown to the profane. They were, neverthe- 
less, probably exhibited pretty freely, as a copy 
of the play, bound in blue leather to match the 
hangings, was always kept in a drawer of one of 
the tables for the purpose of explaining them.* 
Walpole afterwards added one or two curiosities 

* Miss Hawkins (Anecdotes, etc., it, these Beauclerk drawings can 

1822, p. 103) did not think highly be looked on only with disgust and 

of these performances : — "Unless contempt." But she praises the 

the proportions of the human figure gipsies hereafter mentioned as hav- 

are of no importance in drawing ing been copied by Agnes Berry. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 285 

to this closet. It contained, according to the 
last edition of the Catalogue, a head in basalt of 
Jupiter Serapis, and a book of Psalms illumi- 
nated by Giulio Clovio, the latter purchased for 
,£168, at the Duchess of Portland's sale in 
1786. There was also a portrait by Powell, 
after Reynolds, of Lady Di. herself, who lived 
for some time at Twickenham in a house now 
known as Little Marble Hill, many of the rooms 
of which she decorated with her own perform- 
ances. These were apparently the efforts 
which prompted the already mentioned post- 
script to the Parish Register of Twickenham : — 

" Here Genius in a later hour 
Selected its sequester'd bower, 
And threw around the verdant room 
The blushing lilac's chill perfume. 
So loose is flung such bold festoon — 
Each bough so breathes the touch of noon — 
The happy pencil so deceives, 
That Flora, doubly jealous, cries 
' The work's not mine — yet, trust these eyes, 
'T is my own Zephyr waves the leaves.' " * 

Mention has been made of the intermittent 
attacks of insanity to which Walpole's nephew, 
the third Earl of Orford, was subject. At the 

* See "chapter vi. 
19* 



286 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

beginning of 1 774, he had returned to his senses, 
and his uncle, on whom fell the chief cares of 
his affairs during his illnesses, was, for a brief 
period, freed from the irksome strain of an un- 
congenial and a thankless duty. But in April, 
1777, Lord Orford's malady broke out again 
with redoubled violence. In August, he was 
still fluctuating "between violence and stupid- 
ity"; but in March, 1778, a lucid interval had 
once more been reached, and Walpole was re- 
lieved of the care of his person. Of his affairs 
he had declined to take care, as His Lordship 
had employed a lawyer of whom Walpole had 
a bad opinion. " He has resumed the entire 
dominion of himself," says a letter to Mann in 
April, "and is gone into the country, and in- 
tends to command the militia." One of the 
earliest results of this "entire dominion " was 
a step which filled his relative with the keenest 
distress. He offered the famous Houghton col- 
lection of pictures to Catherine of Russia — 
"the most signal mortification to my idolatry 
for my father's memory, that it could receive," 
he says to Lady Ossory. By August, 1779, the 
sale was completed. "The sum stipulated," he 
tells Mann, "is forty or forty-five thousand 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 287 

pounds,* I neither know nor care which; nor 
whether the picture merchant ever receives the 
whole sum, which probably he will not do, as I 
hear it is to be discharged at three payments — 
a miserable bargain for a mighty empress!" . . 
Well ! adieu to Houghton ! about its mad master 
I shall never trouble myself more. . . . Since 
he has stript Houghton of its glory, I do not 
care a straw what he does with the stone or 
the acres ! " f 

Not very long after the date of the above 
letter Walpole made what was, for him, an im- 
portant change of residence. The lease of his 
house in Arlington Street running out, he fixed 
upon a larger one in the then very fashionable 
district of Berkeley Square. The house he 
selected, now numbered 11, was then 40, and 
he had commenced negociations for its purchase 
as early as November, 1777, when, he tells Lady 
Ossory, he had come to town to take possession. 
But difficulties arose over the sale, and he found 
himself involved in a Chancery suit. He was 

* The exact sum was ^40,555. easy to estimate the actual profit 

Cipriani and West were the valuers. over their first cost to the original 

Most of the family portraits were owner. 

reserved ; but so many of the pic- t Walpole to Mann, 4 Aug., 

tures were presents that it is not 1 779. 



288 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

too adroit, however, to allow this to degenerate 
into an additional annoyance, and managed (by 
his own account) to turn what promised to be 
a tedious course of litigation into a combat of 
courtesy. Ultimately, in July, 1779, he had 
won his cause, and was hurrying from Straw- 
berry to pay his purchase money and close the 
bargain. Two months later, he is moving in, 
and is delighted with his acquisition. He would 
not change his two pretty mansions for any in 
England, he says. On the 14th October, he 
took formal possession, upon which day — "his 
inauguration day" — he dates his first letter 
"Berkeley Square." "It is seeming to take a 
new lease of life," he tells Mason. "I was born 
in Arlington Street, lived there about fourteen 
years, returned thither, and passed thirty-seven 
more ; but I have sober monitors that warn me 
not to delude myself." He had still a decade 
and a half before him. 

Little more than twelve months after he had 
settled down in his new abode, he lost the faith- 
ful correspondent at Paris, to whom, for the 
space of fifteen years, he had written nearly 
once a week. By 1774, he had become some- 
what nervous about this accumulated corre- 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 289 

spondence in a language not his own. For an 
Englishman, his French was good, and, as might 
be expected of anything he wrote, character- 
istic and vivacious. But, almost of necessity, 
it contained many minor faults of phraseology 
and arrangement, besides abounding in personal 
anecdote ; and he became apprehensive lest, 
after Madame du Deffand's death, his utterances 
should fall into alien hands. General Conway, 
who visited Paris in October, 1774, had there- 
fore been charged to beg for their return — a 
request which seems at first to have been met 
by the reply on the lady's part that sufficient 
precautions had already been taken for ensur- 
ing their restoration. Ultimately, however, 
they were handed to Conway.* It was in 
all probability under a sense of this concession 
that Walpole once more risked a tedious jour- 
ney to visit his blind friend. In the following 
year he went to Paris, to find her, as usual, 
impatiently expecting his arrival. She sat with 
him until half past two, and before his eyes 

* According to a note in the letters were burnt by her at 

selection from Madame du Def- Walpole's earnest desire — those 

fand's Correspondence with Wal- only excepted which she received 

pole, published in 1810, iii, 44, during the last year of her life, and 

these letters were at that date these, also, were sent back when 

extant. But all the subsequent she died. 



290 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

were open again he had a letter from her. 
"Her soul is immortal, and forces her body to 
keep it company." A little later he complains 
that he never gets to bed from her suppers be- 
fore two or three o'clock. "In short," he says, 
" I need have the activity of a squirrel, and the 
strength of a Hercules, to go through my la- 
bours — not to count how many demetes I have 
had to raccommode and how many memoires to 
present against Tonton,* who grows the greater 
favourite the more people he devours." But 
Tonton's mistress is more worth visiting than 
ever, he tells Selwyn, and she is apparently as 
tireless as ever. " Madame du Deffand and I 
(says another letter) set out last Sunday at 
seven in the evening, to go fifteen miles to a 
ball, and came back after supper ; and another 
night, because it was but one in the morning 

* Tonton was a snappish little her friends presented her with 

dog of Madame du Deffand which Tonton's portrait and the last 

afterwards passed to Walpole, and volumes of her favourite Vol- 

which, when in its mistress's com- taire, adding the following epi- 

pany, must have been extremely gram by the Chevalier de Bouf- 

objectionable. In 1778, some of flers : — 

" Vous les trouvez tous deux charmans, 
Nous les trouvons tous deux mordans ; 
Voila la resemblance : 
L'un ne mord que ses ennemis, 
Et l'autre mord tous vos amis ; 
Voila la difference." 



Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 291 

when she brought me home, she ordered the 
coachman to make the tour of the Quais, and 
drive gently because it was so early." At last, 
on the twelfth of October, he tears himself 
away, to be followed almost immediately by a 
letter of farewell. Here it is : — 



Adieu, ce mot est bien triste; souvenez-vous que vous 
laissez ici la personne dont vous etes le plus aime, et dont 
le bonheur et le malheur consistent dans ce que vous pensez 
pour elle. Donnez-moi de vos nouvelles le plus tot qu'il 
sera possible. 

Je me porte bien, j'ai un peu dormi, ma nuit n'est pas 
finie; je serai tres-exacte au regime, et j'aurai soin de moi 
puisque vous vous y interessez. 



The correspondence thus resumed was con- 
tinued for five years more. Walpole does not 
seem to have visited Paris again, and the refer- 
ences to Madame du Deffand in his general cor- 
respondence are not very frequent. Towards 
the middle of 1 780, her life was plainly closing 
in. In July and August, she complained of 
being more than usually languid, and in a let- 
ter of the 22nd of the latter month intimates that 
it may be her last, as dictation grows painful to 
her. " Ne vous devant revoir de ma vie " — she 
says pathetically — "je n'ai rien a. regretter." 



292 Horace Walpole ; A Memoir. 

From this time she kept her bed, and in Sep- 
tember Walpole tells Lady Ossory that he is 
trembling at every letter he gets from Paris. 
"My dear old friend, I fear, is going! . . . To 
have struggled twenty days at eighty-four shows 
such stamina that I have not totally lost hopes." 
On the 24th, however, after a lethargy of several 
days, she died quietly "without effort or strug- 
gle." "Elle a eu la mort la plus douce" — says 
her faithful and attached secretary Wiart — 
"quoique la maladie ait ete longue." She was 
buried, at her own wish, in the parish church 
of St. Sulpice. By her will she made the Mar- 
quis d'Aulan her heir. Long since, she had 
wished Walpole to accept this character. There- 
upon he had threatened that he would never set 
foot in Paris again if she carried out her inten- 
tion ; and it was abandoned. But she left him 
the whole of her manuscripts, letters, and books. 
As his own letters to her have not been 
printed, her death makes no difference in the 
amount of his correspondence. The war with 
the American Colonies, of which he foresaw 
the disastrous results, and the course of which 
he follows with the greatest keenness to Mann, 
fully absorbs as much of his time as he can 



Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 293 

spare from the vagaries of the Duchess of 
Kingston and the doings of the Duchess of 
Gloucester. Not many months before Madame 
du Deffand died had occurred the famous Gor- 
don Riots, which, as he was in London most 
of the time, naturally occupy his pen. It was 
General Conway who, as the author of Bar- 
naby Rudge has not forgotten, so effectively 
remonstrated with Lord George upon the 
occasion of the visit of the mob to the 
House of Commons; and four days later 
Walpole chronicles from Berkeley Square the 
events of the terrible " Black Wednesday." 
From the roof of Gloucester House he sees 
the blazing prisons — a sight he shall not soon 
forget. Other subjects for which one dips in 
the lucky bag of his records are the defence 
of Gibraltar, the trial of Warren Hastings, the 
loss of the Royal George. But it is generally 
in the minor chronicle that he is most diverting. 
The last bon mot of George Selwyn or Lady 
Townshend, the newest "royal pregnancy," 
the details of court ceremonial, the most recent 
addition to Strawberry, the endless stream of 
anecdote and tittle tattle which runs dimpling 
all the way — these are the themes he loves 



294 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

best — this is the element in which his easy 
persiflage delights to display itself. He is, 
above all, a rieur. About his serious passages 
there is generally a false ring, but never when 
he pours out the gossip that he loves, and of 
which he has so inexhaustible a supply. " I 
can sit and amuse myself with my own 
memory," he says to Mann in February, 
1785, "and yet find new stores at every 
audience that I give to it. Then, for private 
episodes [he has been speaking of his knowl- 
edge of public events], varieties of characters, 
political intrigues, literary anecdotes, &c, the 
profusion I remember is endless ; in short, 
when I reflect on all that I have seen, heard, 
read, written, the many idle hours I have 
passed, the nights I have wasted playing at 
faro, the weeks, nay months, I have spent in 
pain, you will not wonder that I almost think 
I have, like Pythagoras, been Panthoides 
Euphorbus, and have retained one memory 
in at least two bodies." 

He was sixty-eight when he wrote the above 
letter. Mann was eighty-four, and the long 
correspondence — a correspondence "not to be 
paralleled in the annals of the Post Office" — 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 295 

was drawing to a close. "What Orestes and 
Pylades ever wrote to each other for four and 
forty years without meeting" — Walpole asks. 
In June, 1786, however, the last letter of the 
eight hundred and nine specimens printed by 
Cunningham was despatched to Florence.* In 
the following November, Mann died, after a 
prolonged illness. He had never visited Eng- 
land, nor had Walpole set eyes upon him since 
he had left him at Florence in May, 1 741. His 
death followed hard upon that of another faithful 
friend (whose gifts, perhaps, hardly lay in the 
epistolary line), bustling, kindly Kitty Clive. 
Her cheerful, ruddy face, "all sun and vermilion," 
set peacefully in December, 1785, leaving Clive- 
den vacant, not, as we shall see, for long. 
Earlier still had departed another old ally, 
Cole, the antiquary, and the lapse of time had 
in other ways contracted Walpole's circle. In 
1 78 1, Lady Orford had ended her erratic career 
at Pisa, leaving her son a fortune so consider- 
able as to make his uncle regret vaguely that 



* Walpole, as in the case of were still in Mann's possession. 

Madame du Deffand, had taken According to Cunningham (Corr., 

the precaution of getting back his ix, xv), Mann's letters to Walpole 

letters, and at his friend's death, are "absolutely unreadable." 
not more than a dozen of them 



296 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

the sale of the Houghton pictures had not been 
delayed for a few months longer. Three years 
later, she was followed by her brother-in-law, 
Sir Edward Walpole, an occurrence which had 
the effect of leaving between Horace Walpole 
and his father's title nothing but his lunatic 
and childless nephew. 

If his relatives and friends were falling away, 
however, their places — the places of the friends 
at least — were speedily filled again; and, as a 
general rule, most of his male favourites were 
replaced by women. Pinkerton, the antiquary, 
who afterwards published the Walpoliana, is 
one of the exceptions; and several of Walpole's 
letters to him are contained in that book, and 
in the volumes of Pinkerton's own correspon- 
dence published by Dawson Turner in 1 830. But 
Walpole's appetite for correspondence of the 
purely literary kind had somewhat slackened in 
his old age, and it was to the other sex that he 
turned for sympathy and solace. He liked them 
best ; his style suited them ; and he wrote to them 
with most ease. In 1 785, he was visited at Straw- 
berry by Madame de Genlis, who arrived with 
her friend Miss Wilkes and the famous Pamela, 
afterwards Lady Edward Fitzgerald. Madame 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 297 

de Genlis at this date was nearing forty, and 
had lost much of her good looks. But Walpole 
seems to have found her less preciense and 
affected than he had anticipated, and she was, 
for the nonce, unaccompanied by the inevitable 
harp. A later visit was from Dr. Burney and 
his daughter Fanny, " Evelina-Cecilia" Wal- 
pole calls her, a young lady for whose good 
sense and modesty he expresses a genuine ad- 
miration. Miss Burney had not as yet entered 
upon that court bondage which was to be so little 
to her advantage. Another and more intimate 
acquaintanceship of this period was with Miss 
Burney's friend, Hannah More. Hannah More 
ultimately became one of Walpole's correspon- 
dents, although scarcely "so corresponding" as 
he wished ; and they met frequently in society 
when she visited London. On her side, she 
seems to have been wholly fascinated by his wit 
and conversational powers ; he, on his, was 
attracted by her mixed puritanism and vivacity. 
He writes to her as "Saint Hannah"; and she, in 
return, sighs plaintively over his lack of religion. 
Yet (she adds) she "must do him the justice to 
say, that except the delight he has in teasing 
me for what he calls over- strictness, I have 



298 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

never heard a sentence from him which savoured 
of infidelity."* He evidently took a great in- 
terest in her works, and indeed printed at his 
press one of her poems, " Bonner's Ghost." 
His friendship for her endured for the remainder 
of his life, and not long before his death he 
presented her with a richly bound copy of 
Bishop Wilson's Bible with a complimentary 
inscription which may be read in the second 
volume of her Life and Correspondence. 

It was, however, neither the author of Eve- 
lina nor the author of The Manners of the Great 
who was destined to fill the void created by 
the death of Madame du Deffand. In the 
winter of 1787-8, he had first seen, and a year 
later he made the formal acquaintance of, "two 
young ladies of the name of Berry." They had 
a story. Their father, at this time a widower, 
had married for love, and had afterwards been 
supplanted in the good graces of a rich uncle 
by a younger brother who had the generosity 
to allow him an annuity of a thousand a year. 



* He is not explicit as to his tainly requires more credulity to 

creed. "Atheism I dislike" — he believe that there is no God, than 

said to Pinkerton. " It is gloomy, to believe that there is " ( Walpoli- 

uncomfortable ; and, in my eye, ana, i, 75-6). But Pinkerton must 

unnatural and irrational. It cer- be taken with caution. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 299 

In 1783, Mr. Berry had taken his daughters 
abroad to Holland, Switzerland, and Italy, 
whence, in June, 1785, they had returned, being 
then highly cultivated and attractive young 
women of two-and-twenty and one-and-twenty 
respectively. Three years later, Walpole met 
them for the second time at the house of a Lady 
Herries, the wife of a banker in St. James's 
Street. The first time he saw them he ''would 
not be acquainted with them having heard so 
much in their praise that he concluded they 
would be all pretension." But on the second 
occasion, "in a very small company," he sat 
next the elder, Mary, "and found her an angel 
both inside and out." " Her face," he tells Lady 
Ossory — "is formed for a sentimental novel, 
but it is ten times fitter for a fifty times better 
thing, genteel comedy." The other sister was 
speedily discovered to be nearly as charming. 
" They are exceedingly sensible, entirely natural 
and unaffected, frank, and being qualified to 
talk on any subject, nothing is so easy and 
agreeable as their conversation, nor more appo- 
site than their answers and observations. The 
eldest, I discovered by chance, understands 
Latin, and is a perfect Frenchwoman in her 



300 Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 

language. The younger draws charmingly, 
and has copied- admirably Lady Di.'s gipsies,* 
which I lent, though for the first time of her 
attempting colours. They are of pleasing 
figures ; Mary, the eldest, sweet, with fine dark 
eyes, that are very lively when she speaks, with 
a symmetry of face that is the more interesting 
from being pale ; Agnes, the younger, has an 
agreeable sensible countenance hardly to be 
called handsome, but almost. She is less ani- 
mated than Mary, but seems, out of deference 
to her sister, to speak seldomer, for they dote 
on each other, and Mary is always praising her 
sister's talents. I must even tell you they dress 
within the bounds of fashion, though fashion- 
ably; but without the excrescences and balconies 
with which modern hoydens overwhelm and 
barricade their persons. In short, good sense, 
information, simplicity, and ease characterise 
the Berrys; and this is not particularly mine, 
who am apt to be prejudiced, but the universal 
voice of all who know them."f 

"This delightful family," he goes on to say, 

* This (we are told) was Lady beech-wood," and hung in the 

Di.'s c/iefd'ceztvre. It represented Red Bedchamber at Strawberry. 

" Gipsies telling a country maiden t Walpole to Lady Ossory, 1 1 

her fortune at the entrance of a Oct., 1788. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 301 

"comes to me almost every Sunday evening." 
(They were at the time living on Twickenham 
Common.) Of the father not much is recorded 
beyond the fact that he was "a little merry 
man with a round face," and (as his eldest 
daughter reports) " an odd inherent easiness in 
his disposition," who seems to have been per- 
fectly contented in his modest and unobtrusive 
character of paternal appendage to the favour- 
ites. Walpole's attachment to his new friends 
grew rapidly. Only a few days after the date 
of the foregoing letter, Mr. Kirgate's press was 
versifying in their honour, and they themselves 
were already "his two Straw Berries" whose 
praises he sang to all his friends. He delighted 
in devising new titles for them — they were his 
"twin wives," his "dear Both," his "Amours." 
For them in this year he began writing the 
charming little volume of Reminiscences of the 
Courts of George the 1st and 2nd, and in Decem- 
ber, 1789, he dedicated to them his Catalogue of 
Strawberry Hill. It was not long before he 
had secured them a home at Teddington, and 
finally, when, in 1791, Cliveden became vacant, 
he prevailed upon them to become his neigh- 
bours. He afterwards bequeathed the house to 



302 Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 

them, and for many years after his death, it 
was their summer residence. On both sides 
the acquaintanceship was advantageous. His 
friendship at once introduced them to the best 
and most accomplished fashionable society of 
their day, while the charm of their " company, 
conversation and talents " must have inexpress- 
ibly sweetened and softened what, on his part, 
had begun to grow more and more a solitary, 
joyless, and painful old age. 

His establishment of his "wives" in his im- 
mediate vicinity was not, however, accomplished 
without difficulty. For a moment some ill- 
natured newspaper gossip, which attributed the 
attachment of the Berry family to interested 
motives, so justly aroused the indignation of 
the elder sister that the whole arrangement 
threatened to collapse. But the slight estrange- 
ment thus caused soon passed away ; and at 
the close of 1791, they took up their abode in 
Mrs. Clive's old house, now doubly honoured. 
On the 5th of the December in the same year, 
" after a new fit of frenzy," Walpole's nephew 
died, and he became fourth Earl of Orford. The 
new dignity was by no means a welcome one, 
and scarcely compensated for the cares which it 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 303 

entailed. "A small estate, loaded with debt, 
and of which I do not understand the manage- 
ment, and am too old to learn ; a source of law 
suits amongst my near relations, though not 
affecting me ; endless conversations with law- 
yers, and packets of letters to read every day 
and answer, — all this weight of new business is 
too much for the rag of life that yet hangs 
about me, and was preceded by three weeks of 
anxiety about my unfortunate nephew, and a 
daily correspondence with physicians and mad- 
doctors, falling upon me when I had been out 
of order ever since July.* " For the other 
empty metamorphosis," he writes to Hannah 
More, "that has happened to the outward man, 
you do me justice in concluding that it can do 
nothing but tease me; it is being called names 
in one's old age. I had rather be my Lord 
Mayor, for then I should keep the nickname but 
a year; and mine I may retain a little longer, 
not that at seventy-five I reckon on becoming 
my Lord Methusalem." For some time he 
could scarcely bring himself to use his new 
signature, and occasionally varied it by describ- 
ing himself as "The uncle of the late Earl of 

* Walpole to Pinkerion, 26 Dec, 1791. 



304 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

Orford." In 1792, he delivered himself of the 
following Epitaphium vivi Auctoris : 

" An estate and an earldom at seventy-four ! 
Had I sought them or wished them 't would add one fear 

more, 
That of making a countess when almost four score. 
But Fortune, who scatters her gifts out of season, 
Though unkind to my limbs, has still left me my reason, 
And whether she lowers or lifts me, I'll try, 
In the plain simple style I have lived in, to die: 
For ambition too humble, for manners too high." 

The last line seems like another of the many- 
echoes of Goldsmith's Retaliation. As for the 
fear indicated in the third, it is hinted that this 
at one time bade fair to be something more than 
a poetical apprehension. If we are to credit a 
tradition handed down by Lord Lansdowne, he 
had been willing to go through the form of mar- 
riage with either of the Berrys, merely to secure 
their society, and to enrich them, as he had the 
power of charging the Orford estate with a 
jointure of ^2000 per annum. But this can 
only have been a passing thought at some 
moment when their absence, in Italy or else- 
where, left him more sensitive to the loss of 
their gracious and stimulating presence. He 
himself was far too keenly alive to ridicule, and 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 305 

too much in bondage to les biense'ances, to take 
a step which could scarcely escape ill-natured 
comment, and Mary Berry, who would certainly 
have been his preference, was not only as fully 
alive as was he to the shafts of the censorious, 
but, during the greater part of her acquaintance- 
ship with him, was, apparently with his know- 
ledge, warmly attached to a certain good-looking 
General O'Hara, who, a year before Walpole's 
death, in November, 1796, definitely proposed. 
He had just been appointed Governor of Gib- 
raltar, and he wished Miss Berry to marry him 
at once and go out with him. This, "out of 
consideration for others," she declined to do. 
A few months later the engagement was 
broken off, and she never again saw her soldier 
admirer. Whether Lord Orford's comfort went 
for anything in this adjournment of her hap- 
piness, does not clearly appear; but it is only 
reasonable to suppose that his tenacious desire 
for her companionship had its influence in a 
decision which, however much it may have been 
for the best (and there were those of her friends 
who regarded it as a providential escape), was 
nevertheless a lifelong source of regret to her- 
self. When, in 1802, she heard suddenly at the 



306 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

Opera of O'Hara's death, she fell senseless to 
the floor. 

The " late Horace Walpole " never took his 
seat in the House of Lords. He continued, as 
before, to divide his time between Berkeley 
Square and Strawberry, to eulogise his "wives" 
to Lady Ossory, and to watch life from his be- 
loved Blue Room. Now and then he did the 
rare honours of his home to a distinguished 
guest — in 1793, it was the Duchess of York, 
in 1795, Queen Charlotte herself. In the latter 
year died his old friend Conway, by this time a 
Field- Marshal, and it was evident at the close 
of 1796 that his faithful correspondent would 
not long survive him. His ailments had in- 
creased, and in the following January, he wrote 
his last letter to Lady Ossory: — 

Jan. 15, 1797. 
My Dear Madam : — 

You distress me infinitely by showing my idle notes, 
which I cannot conceive can amuse anybody. My old- 
fashioned breeding impels me every now and then to reply 
to the letters you honour me with writing, but in truth very 
unwillingly, for I seldom can have anything particular to say;. 
I scarce go out of my own house, and then only to two or 
three very private places, where I see nobody that really knows 
anything, and what I learn comes from Newspapers, that 
collect intelligence from coffee-houses, consequently what I 
neither believe nor report. At home I see only a few chari- 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 307 

table elders, except about four-score nephews and nieces of 
various ages, who are each brought to me about once a-year, 
to stare at me as the Methusalem of the family, and they can 
only speak of their own contemporaries, which interest me no 
more than if they talked of their dolls, or bats and balls. 
Must not the result of all this, Madam, make me a very 
entertaining correspondent? And can such letters be worth 
showing ? or can I have any spirit when so old, and reduced 
to dictate ? 

Oh! my good Madam, dispense with me from such a task, 
and think how it must add to it to apprehend such letters 
being shown. Pray send me no more such laurels, which I 
desire no more than their leaves when decked with a scrap 
of tinsel, and stuck on twelfth-cakes that lie on the shop- 
boards of pastry-cooks at Christmas. I shall be quite con- 
tent with a sprig of rosemary thrown after me, when the 
parson of the parish commits my dust to dust. Till then, 
pray, Madam, accept the resignation of your 

Ancient servant, 

Orford. 

Six weeks after the date of the above letter, 
he died at his house in Berkeley Square, to 
which he had been moved at the close of the 
previous year. During the last weeks of his 
life, he suffered from a cruel lapse of memory 
which led him to suppose himself neglected 
even by those who had but just quitted him. 
He sank gradually and expired without pain 
on the 2nd March, 1797, being then in his 
eightieth year. He was buried at the family 
seat of Houghton. 



308 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

His fortune, over and above his leases, 
amounted to ninety-one thousand pounds. 
To each of the Miss Berrys, he left the sum 
of ^4000 for their lives, together with the 
house and garden of " Little Strawberry " 
(Cliveden), the long meadow in front of it, 
and all the furniture. He also bequeathed to 
them and to their father his printed works 
and his manuscripts, with discretionary power 
to publish. It was understood that the real 
editorship was to fall on the elder sister, who 
forthwith devoted herself to her task. The 
result was the edition, in five quarto volumes, 
of Lord Orford's Works, so often referred 
to during the progress of these pages, which 
appeared in 1 798. They were entirely due to 
her unremitting care, her father's share being 
confined to a sentence in the preface, in which 
she is eulogised.* 

Strawberry Hill passed to Mrs. Darner for 
life, together with ^2000 to keep it in repair. 
After living in it for some years, she resigned 
it, in 181 1, to the Countess Dowager of Wal- 
degrave, in whom the remainder in fee was 

* Mary Berry died Nov., 1852 ; sham churchyard, "amidst scenes" 
Agnes Berry, Jan., 1852. They — says the inscription — "which in 
were buried in one grave in Peter- life they had frequented and loved. ' ' 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 309 

vested. It subsequently passed to George, 
seventh Earl Waldegrave, who sold its con- 
tents in 1842. At his death, in 1846, he left it 
to his widow Frances, Countess of Waldegrave, 
who subsequently married the Rt. Hon. Chi- 
chester Fortescue, now Lord Carlingford. Lady 
Waldegrave died in 1879; but she had greatly 
added to and extended the original building, 
besides restoring many of the objects by which 
it had been decorated in Walpole's day. 




CHAPTER X. 

Macaulay on Walpole ; effect of the Edinburgh essay j Macaulay 
and Mary Berry ; portraits of Walpole; Miss Hawkins's 
description ; Pinkerton's rainy day at Strawberry j Walpole' s 
character as a man ; as a virtuoso ; as a politician j as an 
author and letter-writer. 



3" 




X. 



WHEN, in October, 1833, Lord (then Mr.) 
Macaulay completed for the Edinbtirgk 
his review of Lord Dover's edition of Walpole's 
letters to Sir Horace Mann, he had apparently 
performed to his entire satisfaction the operation 
known, in the workmanlike vocabulary of the 
time, as "dusting the jacket" of his unfortunate 
reviewee. "I was up at four this morning to 
put the last touch to it," he tells his sister Han- 
nah. " I often differ with the majority about 
21 313 



314 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

other people's writings, and still oftener about 
my own ; and therefore I may very likely be 
mistaken ; but I think that this article will be a 
hit. . . . Nothing ever cost me more pains 
than the first half; I never wrote anything so 
flowingly as the latter half; and I like the latter 
half the best. [The latter half, it should be 
stated, was a rapid and very brilliant sketch of 
Sir Robert Walpole ; the earlier, which cost so 
much labour, was the portrait of Sir Robert's 
youngest son.] I have laid it on Walpole 
[i. e., Horace Walpole] so unsparingly," he 
goes on to say, " that I shall not be surprised if 
Miss Berry should cut me. . . . Neither am I 
sure that Lord and Lady Holland will be well 
pleased." * 

His later letters show him to have been a 
true prophet. Macvey Napier, then the editor 
of the "Blue and Yellow," was enthusiastic, 
praising the article "in terms absolutely extra- 
vagant." " He says that it is the best that I ever 
wrote," the critic tells his favourite correspon- 
dent, a statement which at this date must be 
qualified by the fact that he penned some of his 
most famous essays subsequent to its appear- 

* Trevelyan's Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, ch. v. 



Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 315 

ance. On the other hand, Miss Berry resented 
the review so much that Sir Stratford Canning 
advised its author not to go near her. But appa- 
rently her anger was soon dispelled, for the same 
letter which makes this announcement relates 
that she was already appeased. Lady Holland, 
too, was "in a rage," though with what part of 
the article does not transpire, while her good- 
natured husband told Macaulay that he quite 
agreed with him, but that they had better not 
discuss the subject. Lady Holland's irritation 
was probably prompted by her intimacy with 
the Waldegrave family, to whom the letters 
edited by Lord Dover belonged, and for whose 
benefit they were published. But, as Macaulay 
said justly, his article was surely not calculated 
to injure the sale of the book. Her imperious 
ladyship's displeasure, however, like that of 
Miss Berry, was of brief duration. Macaulay 
was too necessary to her reunions to be long 
exiled from her little court. 

Among those who occupy themselves in such 
enquiries, it has been matter for speculation 
what particular grudge Macaulay could have 
cherished against Horace Walpole when, to use 
his own expression, he laid it on him "so unspar- 



3 16 Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 

ingly." To this his correspondence affords no 
clue. Mr. Cunningham holds that he did it "to 
revenge the dislike which Walpole bore to the 
Bedford faction, the followers of Fox and the 
Shelburne school." It is possible, as another 
authority has suggested, that " in the Whig 
circles of Macaulay's time, there existed a tradi- 
tional grudge against Horace Walpole," owing 
to obscure political causes connected with his 
influence over his friend Conway. But these 
reasons do not seem relevant enough to make 
Macaulay's famous onslaught a mere vendetta. 
It is more reasonable to suppose that between 
his avowed delight in Walpole as a letter-writer 
and his robust contempt for him as an individual, 
he found a subject to his hand, which admitted 
of all the brilliant antithesis and sparkle of epi- 
gram which he lavished upon it. Walpole's 
trivialities and eccentricities, his whims and 
affectations, are seized with remorseless skill, 
and presented with all the rhetorical advantages 
with which the writer so well knew how to invest 
them. As regards his literary estimate, the truth 
of the picture can scarcely be gainsaid ; but 
the personal character, as Walpole's surviving 
friends felt, is certainly too much en noir. Miss 



Hoi'ace Walpole : A Memoir. 317 

Berry, indeed, in her "Advertisement" to Vol. vi 
of Wright's edition of the Letters, raised a gentle 
cry of expostulation against the entire repre- 
sentation. She laid stress upon the fact that 
Macaulay had not known Walpole in the flesh 
(a disqualification to which too much weight 
may easily be attached) ; she dwelt upon the 
warmth of Walpole's attachments ; she contested 
the charge of affectation, and, in short, made 
such a gallant attempt at a defence as her loyalty 
to her old friend enabled her to offer. Yet, if 
Macaulay had never known Walpole at all, she 
herself, it might be urged, had only known him 
in his old age. Upon the whole, " with due allow- 
ance for a spice of critical pepper on one hand, 
and a handful of friendly rosemary on the other," 
as Croker says, both characters are "substan- 
tially true." Under Macaulay's brush Walpole 
is depicted as he appeared to that critic's mas- 
culine and (for the nonce) unsympathetic spirit 5 
in Miss Berry's picture, the likeness is touched 
with a pencil at once grateful, affectionate, and 
indulgent. The biographer of to-day who is 
neither endeavouring to portray Walpole in his 
most favourable aspect, nor preoccupied (as 
Cunningham supposed the great Whig essayist 



3 1 8 Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 

to have been) with what would be thought of 
his work " at Woburn, at Kensington, and in 
Berkeley Square," may safely borrow details 
from the delineation of either artist. 

Of portraits of Walpole (not in words) there 
is no lack. Besides that belonging to Mrs. 
Bedford, described in Chapter i, there is the 
enamel by Zincke painted in 1745, which is 
reproduced at p. 71 of Vol. i of Cunning- 
ham's edition. There is another portrait of 
him by Nathaniel Hone, R. A., in the National 
Portrait Gallery. A more characteristic pre- 
sentment than any of these is the little 
drawing by Miintz which shews his patron 
sitting in the Library at Strawberry with the 
Thames and a passing barge seen through 
the open window. But his most interesting 
portraits are two which exhibit him in man- 
hood and old age. One is the half-length by 
J. G. Eckardt which once hung in its black 
and gold frame in the Blue Bedchamber of the 
Gothic castle, near the companion pictures of 
Gray and Bentley. Like these, it was "from 
Vandyck," that is to say it was in a costume 
copied from that painter, and depicts the sitter 
in a laced collar and ruffles, leaning upon a 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 319 

copy of the slides Walpoliance, with a view of 
part of the Gothic castle in the distance. The 
canvas bears at the back the date of 1754, so 
that it represents him at the age of seven-and- 
thirty. The shaven face is rather lean than 
thin, the forehead high, the brown hair brushed 
back and slightly curled. The eyes are dark, 
bright, and intelligent, and the small mouth 
wears a slight smile. The other, a drawing by 
Sir Thomas Lawrence, is that of a much older 
man, having been executed in 1 796. The eye- 
lids droop wearily ; the thin lips have a pinched, 
mechanical urbanity, and the features are worn 
by years and ill-health. It is reproduced as a 
frontispiece in Vol. i of his works. There are 
other portraits by Reynolds, 1757 (which Mc- 
Ardell engraved), by Rosalba, Reading, Parisot, 
Dance, and Barlow ; but it is sufficient to have 
indicated those mentioned above. 

Of the Walpole of later years there are more 
descriptions than one, and among these, that 
given by Miss Hawkins, the daughter of the 
pompous author of the History of Music, is, if 
the most familiar, also the most graphic. Sir 
John Hawkins was Walpole's neighbour at 
Twickenham House, and the History is said to 



320 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

have been undertaken at Walpole's instance. 
Miss Hawkins's description is of Walpole as 
she recalled him before 1772. "His figure," 
she says, .... "was not merely tall, but more 
properly long and slender to excess ; his com- 
plexion and particularly his hands, of a most 
unhealthy paleness. . . . His eyes were re- 
markably bright and penetrating, very dark 
and lively: — his voice was not strong, but his 
tones were extremely pleasant, and if I may so 
say, highly gentlemanly. I do not remember 
his common gait ; * he always entered a room in 
that style of affected delicacy, which fashion had 
made almost natural ; — chapeau bras between 
his hands as if he wished to compress it, or under 
his arm — knees bent, and feet on tip-toe, as if 
afraid of a wet floor. His dress in visiting 
was most usually, in summer when I most saw 
him, a lavender suit, the waistcoat embroidered 
with a little silver or of white silk worked in 
the tambour, partridge silk stockings, and 
gold buckles; ruffles and frill generally lace. 



* It must, by his own account, a peewit ; and if I do not natter 

have been peculiar. " Walking is myself, my march at present is 

not one of my excellences," he more like a dabchick's " ( Wal- 

writes. " In my best days Mr. pole to Lady Ossory, 18 August, 

Winnington said I tripped like 1775). 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 321 

I remember when a child, thinking him very 
much under-dressed if at any time except in 
mourning, he wore hemmed cambric. In sum- 
mer no powder, but his wig combed straight, 
and showing his very smooth pale forehead, 
and queued behind: — in winter powder."* 

Pinkerton, who knew Walpole from 1784 
until his death, and whose disappointment of a 
legacy is supposed, in places, to have mingled a 
more than justifiable amount of gall with his 
ink, has nevertheless left a number of interest- 
ing particulars respecting his habits and personal 
characteristics. They are too long to quote en- 
tire ; but are, at the same time, too picturesque 
to be greatly compressed. He contradicts Miss 
Hawkins in one respect, for he says Walpole 
was "short and slender," but "compact and 
neatly formed," an account which is confirmed 
by Miintz's full-length. " When viewed from 
behind, he had somewhat of a boyish appear- 
ance, owing to the form of his person, and the 
simplicity of his dress." None of his pictures, 
says Pinkerton, "express the placid goodness 
of his eyes, which would often sparkle with 
sudden rays of wit, or dart forth flashes of the 

* Anecdotes, etc., by L. M. Hawkins, 1822, pp. 105-6. 



322 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

most keen and intuitive intelligence. His laugh 
was forced and uncouth, and even his smile not 
the most pleasing." 

" His walk was enfeebled by the gout; which, if the editor's 
memory do not deceive, he mentioned that he had been tor- 
mented with since the age of twenty-five, adding, at the 
same time, that it was no hereditary complaint, his father, 
Sir Robert Walpole, who always drank ale, never having 
known that disorder, and far less his other parent. This 
painful complaint not only affected his feet, but attacked 
his hands to such a degree that his fingers were always 
swelled and deformed, and discharged large chalk-stones 
once or twice a year; upon which occasion he would observe, 
with a smile, that he must set up an inn, for he could chalk 
up a score with more ease and rapidity than any man in 
England." 

After referring to the strict temperance of 
his life, Pinkerton goes on : — 

" Though he sat up very late, either writing or conversing, 
he generally rose about nine o'clock, and appeared in the 
breakfast room, his constant and chosen apartment, with fine 
vistos towards the Thames. His approach was proclaimed, 
and attended, by a favourite little dog, the legacy of the 
Marquise du Deffand;* and which ease and attention had 
rendered so fat that it could hardly move. This was placed 
beside him on a small sofa ; the tea-kettle, stand and heater, 
were brought in, and he drank two or three cups of that 
liquor out of most rare and precious ancient porcelain of 
Japan, of a fine white, embossed with large leaves. The 
account of his china cabinet, in his description of his villa, 

* Tonton. See note to Chapter ix. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 323 

will show how rich he was in that elegant luxury. . . . 
The loaf and butter were not spared . . . and the dog 
and the squirrels had a liberal share of his repast.* 

" Dinner [his hour for which was four] was served up in the 
small parlour, or large dining room, as it happened : in winter 
generally the former. His valet a [Swiss named Colomb] 
supported him downstairs,! and he ate most moderately of 
chicken, pheasant, or any light food. Pastry he disliked, as 
difficult of digestion, though he would taste a morsel of veni- 
son pye. Never, but once that he drank two glasses of white 
wine, did the editor see him taste any liquor, except ice- 
water. A pail of ice was placed under the table, in which 
stood a decanter of water, from which he supplied himself 
with his favourite beverage. . . . 

" If his guest liked even a moderate quantity of wine, he 
must have called for it during dinner, for almost instantly 
after he rang the bell to order coffee up-stairs. Thither he 
would pass about five o'clock, and generally resuming his 
place on the sofa, would sit till two o'clock in the morning 
in miscellaneous chit-chat, full of singular anecdotes, strokes 
of wit, and acute observations, occasionally sending for 
books, or curiosities, or passing to the library, as any refer- 
ence happened to arise in conversation. After his coffee he 
tasted nothing ; but the snuff box of tabac d'etrennes from 
Fribourg's was not forgotten, and was replenished from a 
canister lodged in an ancient marble urn of great thickness, 
which stood in the window seat, and served to secure its 
moisture and rich flavour. 



* Another passage in the Wal- came down from the high trees, to 

poliana (i, 71-2) explains this: — enjoy their allowance." 
" Regularly after breakfast, in the t " I cannot go up and down 

summer season, at least, Mr. Wal- stairs without being led by a 

pole used to mix bread and milk servant. It is tempzis abire for 

in a large bason, and throw it out me : lusi satis " ( Walpole to Pin- 

at the window of the sitting-room, kerton, 15 May, 1794). 
for the squirrels, who, soon after, 



324 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

" Such was a private rainy day of Horace Walpole. The 
forenoon quickly passed in roaming through the numerous 
apartments of the house, in which, after twenty visits still 
something new would occur, and he was indeed constantly 
adding fresh acquisitions. Sometimes a walk in the grounds 
would intervene, on which occasions he would go out in 
his slippers through a thick dew ; and he never wore a hat. 
He said that, on his first visit to Paris, he was ashamed 
of his effeminacy, when he saw every little meagre French- 
man, whom even he could have thrown down with a breath, 
walking without a hat, which he could not do, without a 
certainty of that disease, which the Germans say is endemial 
in England, and is termed by the natives le catch-cold* The 
first trial cost him a slight fever, but he got over it, and 
never caught cold afterwards, draughts of air, damp rooms, 
windows open at his back, all situations were alike to him 
in this respect. He would even show some little offence at 
any solicitude, expressed by his guests on such an occasion, 
as an idea arising from the seeming tenderness of his frame; 
and would say, with a half smile of good-humoured cross- 
ness, ' My back is the same with my face, and my neck is 
like my nose.' His ice water he not only regarded as a pre- 
servative from such an accident, but he would sometimes 
observe that he thought his stomach and bowels would last 
longer than his bones; such conscious vigour and strength 
in those parts did he feel from the use of that beverage." t 

The only particular that Cunningham adds 
to this chronicle of his habits is one too char- 
acteristic of the man to be omitted. After 
dinner at Strawberry, he says, the scent was 

* " I have persisted " — he tells and in going open-breasted with- 

Gray from Paris in January, 1766 out an under waistcoat." 

— "through this Siberian winter t Walpoliana, xl-xlv. 
in not adding a grain to my clothes 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 325 

removed by " a censer or pot of frankincense." 
According to the Description, etc., there was 
a tripod of ormoulu kept in the Breakfast Room 
for this purpose. It is difficult to identify the 
"ancient marble urn of great thickness" in 
which the snuff was stored; but it may have 
been that "of granite, brought from one of the 
Greek Islands, and given to Sir Robert Walpole 
by Sir Charles Wager" which stood in the 
same room. 

Walpole's character may be considered in a 
fourfold aspect, as a man, a virtuoso, a politi- 
cian, and an author. The first is the least easy 
to describe. What strikes one most forcibly is, 
that he was primarily and before all an aristo- 
crat, or, as in his own day he would have been 
called, a "person of Quality," whose warmest sym- 
pathies were reserved for those of his own rank. 
Out of the charmed circle of the peerage and 
baronetage, he had few strong connections ; and 
although in middle life he corresponded volu- 
minously with antiquaries such as Cole and 
Zouch, and in the languor of his old age turned 
eagerly to the renovating society of young 
women such as Hannah More and the Miss 
Berrys, however high his heart may have 



326 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

placed them, it may be doubted whether his 
head ever quite exalted them to the level of 
Lady Caroline Petersham, or Lady Ossory, or 
Her Grace of Gloucester. In a measure, this 
would also account for his unsympathetic atti- 
tude to some of the great literati of his day. 
With Gray he had been at school and college, 
which made a difference ; but he no doubt re- 
garded Fielding and Hogarth and Goldsmith and 
Johnson, apart from their confessed hostility to 
" high life " and his beloved "genteel comedy," as 
gifted but undesirable outsiders — "horn-handed 
breakers of the glebe " in Art and Letters — 
with whom it would be impossible to be as inti- 
mately familiar as one could be with such glorified 
amateurs as Bunbury and Lady Lucan and Lady 
Di. Beauclerk, who were all' more or less born 
in the purple. To the friends of his own class 
he was constant and considerate, and he seems 
to have cherished a genuine affection to Con- 
way, George Montagu, and Sir Horace Mann. 
With regard to Gray, his relations, it would 
seem, were rather those of intellectual affinity 
and esteem than downright affection. But his 
closest friends were women. In them, that is 
in the women of his time, he found just that 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 327 

atmosphere of sunshine and insouciance, those 
conversational "lilacs and nightingales," in 
which his soul delighted, and which were most 
congenial to his restless intelligence and easily 
fatigued temperament. To have seen him at 
his best one should have listened to him, not 
when he was playing the antiquary with Duca- 
rel or Conyers Middleton, but gossipping of 
ancient greenroom scandals at Cliveden, or 
explaining the mysteries of the " Officina Arbu- 
teana " to Madame de Boufflers or Lady Town- 
shend, or delighting Mary and Agnes Berry, in 
the half-light of the Round Drawing Room at 
Strawberry, with his old stories of Lady Suffolk 
and Lady Hervey, and of the monstrous raven, 
under guise of which the disembodied spirit of 
His Majesty King George the First was sup- 
posed to have revisited the disconsolate Duch- 
ess of Kendal. Comprehending thoroughly 
that cardinal precept of conversation — "never 
to weary your hearer," he was an admirable 
raconteur ; and his excellent memory, shrewd 
perceptions, and volatile wit — all the more 
piquant for its never-failing spark of well-bred 
malice — must have made him a most captivat- 
ing companion. If — as Scott says — his temper 



328 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

was " precarious," it is more charitable to re- 
member that in middle and later life he was 
nearly always tormented with a malady seldom 
favourable to good humour, than to explain the 
less amiable details of his conduct (as does Mr. 
Croker) by the hereditary taint of insanity. In 
a life of eighty years many hot friendships 
cool, even with tempers not " precarious." As 
regards the charges sometimes made against 
him of coldness and want of generosity, very 
good evidence would be required before they 
could be held to be established ; and a man is 
not necessarily niggardly because his benefac- 
tions do not come up to the standard of all the 
predatory members of the community. It is be- 
sides clear, as Conway and Madame du Deffand 
would have testified, that he could be royally 
generous when necessity required. That he 
was careful rather than lavish in his expenditure 
must be admitted. It may be added that he 
was very much in bondage to public opinion, 
and morbidly sensitive to ridicule. 

As a virtuoso and amateur, his position is a 
mixed one. He was certainly widely different 
from that typical art connoisseur of his day — 
the butt of Goldsmith and of Reynolds — who 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 329 

travelled the Grand Tour to litter a gallery at 
home with broken- nosed busts and the rubbish 
of the Roman picture-factories. As the preface 
to the Aides Walpoliance shewed, he really 
knew something about painting, in fact was a 
capable draughtsman himself, and besides, 
through Mann and others, had enjoyed ex- 
ceptional opportunities for procuring genuine 
antiques. But his collection was not so rich in 
this way as might have been anticipated ; and 
his portraits, his china, and his miniatures were 
probably his best possessions. For the rest, he 
was an indiscriminate rather than an eclectic 
collector ; and there was also considerable truth 
in that strange " attraction from the great to the 
little, and from the useful to the odd " which 
Macaulay has noted. Many of the marvels at 
Strawberry would never have found a place in 
the treasure-houses — say of Beckford or Samuel 
Rogers. It is difficult to fancy Bermingham's 
fables in paper on looking-glass, or Hubert's 
cardcuttings, or the fragile mosaics of Mrs. 
Delany either at Fonthill or St. James's Place. 
At the same time, it should be remembered that 
several of the most trivial or least defensible 
objects were presents which possibly reflected 



330 Horace Walpole: A Memoir. 

rather the charity of the recipient than the good 
taste of the giver. All the articles over which 
Macaulay lingers, Wolsey's hat, Van Tromp's pipe 
case, and King William's spurs, were obtained in 
this way ; and (with a laugher) Horace Walpole, 
who laughed a good deal himself, would probably 
have made as merry as the most mirth-loving 
spectator could have desired. But such items 
gave a heterogeneous character to the gather- 
ing, and turned what might have been a model 
museum into an old curiosity-shop. In any 
case, however, it was a memorable curiosity- 
shop, and in this modern era of bric-a-brac 
would probably attract far more serious attention 
than it did in those practical and pre-aesthetic 
days of 1842 when it fell under the hammer of 
George Robins.* 

Walpole's record as a politician is a brief one, 
and if his influence upon the questions of his 
time was of any importance, it must have been 
exercised unobtrusively. During the period of 
the "great Walpolean battle," as Junius styled 
the struggle that culminated in the downfall of 
Lord Orford, he was a fairly regular attendant 

* See Mr. Robins's Catalogue of the Classic Contents of Strawberry 
Hill, etc. [1842.] 4to. 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 331 

in the House of Commons ; and, as we have 
seen, spoke in his father's behalf when the 
motion was made for an enquiry into his con- 
duct. Nine years later, he moved the address, 
and a few years later still, delivered a speech upon 
the employment of Swiss Regiments in the Colo- 
nies. Finally he resigned his " senatorial dig- 
nity," quitting the scene with the valediction of 
those who depreciate what they no longer desire 
to retain. "What could I see but sons and grand- 
sons playing over the same knaveries, that I 
have seen their fathers and grandfathers act. 
Could I ever hear oratory beyond my Lord 
Chatham's ? Will there ever be parts equal to 
Charles Townshend's ? Will George Grenville 
cease to be the most tiresome of beings ? " * In his 
earlier days he was a violent Whig — "at times 
almost a Republican " (to which latter phase of his 
opinions must be attributed the transformation 
of King Charles's death-warrant into "Major 
Charta ") ; " in his old and enfeebled age," says 
Miss Berry, "the horrors of the first French 
Revolution made him a Tory ; while he always 
lamented, as one of the worst effects of its ex- 
cesses, that they must necessarily retard to a 

* Walpole to Montagu, 12 March, 1768. 



S3 2 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

distant period the progress and establishment 
of religious liberty." He deplored the Ameri- 
can War, and disapproved the Slave Trade ; but, 
in sum, it is to be suspected that his main 
interest in politics, after his father's death, and 
apart from the preservation throughout an "age 
of small factions " of his own uncertain sine- 
cures, was the good and ill-fortune of the hand- 
some and amiable, but moderately eminent 
statesman General Conway. It was for Con- 
way that he took his most active steps in the 
direction of political intrigue ; and perhaps his 
most important political utterance is the Counter 
Address to the Public on the late Dismission of 
a General Officer, which was prompted by Con- 
way's deprivation of his command for voting in 
the opposition with himself in the debate upon 
the illegality of general warrants. Whether he 
would have taken office if it had been offered 
to him, may be a question ; but his attitude, as 
disclosed by his letters, is a rather hesitating 
nolo episcopari. The most interesting result of 
his connection with public affairs is the series of 
sketches of political men dispersed through his 
correspondence, and through the posthumous 
Memoirs published by Lord Holland and Sir 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 333 

Denis Le Marchant. Making every allowance 
for his prejudices and partisanship (and of 
neither can Walpole be acquitted), it is impos- 
sible not to regard these latter as remarkable 
contributions to historical literature. Even Mr. 
Croker admits that they contain " a considerable 
portion of voluntary or involuntary truth," and 
such an admission, when extorted from Lord 
Beaconsfield's "Rigby," of whom no one can 
justly say that he was ignorant of the politics 
of Walpole's day, has all the force of an un- 
solicited testimonial.* 



* The full titles of these memoirs 
are Metrwires of the last Ten Years 
of the Reign of King George II. 
Edited by Lord Holland. 2 vols., 
4to, 1822 ; and Memoirs of the 
Reign of King George III. Edited, 
with Notes, by Sir Denis Le Mar- 
chant, Bart. 4 vols., 8vo, 1845. 
Both were reviewed, ?nore sno, by 
Mr. Croker in the Qicarterly, with 
the main intention of proving that 
all Walpole's pictures of his con- 
temporaries were coloured and 
distorted by successive disappoint- 
ments arising out of his anxieties 
respecting the patent places from 
which he derived his income, — in 
other words (Mr. Croker's words!) 
that " the whole is ' a copious 
polyglot of spleen.'" Such an 
investigation was in the favourite 
line of the critic, and might be ex- 
22* 



pected to result in a formidable 
indictment. But the best judges 
hold it to have been exaggerated 
and to-day the method of Mr. 
Croker is more or less discredited. 
Indeed, it is an instance of those 
quaint revenges of the whirligig of 
time, that some of his utterances 
are more applicable to himself than 
Walpole. " His (Walpole's) natu- 
ral inclination (says Croker) was 
to grope an obscure way through 
mazes and souterrains rather than 
walk the high road by daylight. 
He is never satisfied with the plain 
and obvious cause of any effect, and 
is for ever striving after some tor- 
tuous solution." This is precisely 
what unkind modern critics affirm 
of the Rt. Honourable John Wil- 
son Croker. 



334 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

This mention of the Memoirs naturally leads 
us to that final consideration, the position of 
Walpole as an author. Most of the productions 
which fill the five large volumes given to the 
world in 1 798 by Miss Berry's pious care have 
been referred to in the course of the foregoing 
pages, and it is not necessary to recapitulate 
them here. The place which they occupy in 
English literature was never a large one, and it 
has grown smaller with lapse of time. Walpole, 
in truth, never took letters with sufficient serious- 
ness. He was willing enough to obtain repute, 
but upon condition that he should be allowed to 
despise his calling and laugh at "thoroughness." 
If masterpieces could have been dashed off at 
a hand-gallop ; if antiquarian studies could have 
been made of permanent value by the exercise 
of mere elegant facility ; if a dramatic reputation 
could have been secured by the simple accumu- 
lation of horrors upon Horror's head, his might 
have been a great literary name. But it is not 
thus the severer Muses are cultivated ; and 
Walpole's mood was too variable, his industry 
too intermittent, his fine-gentleman self-con- 
sciousness too inveterate to admit of his pro- 
ducing anything that (as one of his critics has 
said) deserves a higher title than " opuscula." 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 335 

His essays in the World lead one to think that 
he might have made a more than respectable 
essayist, if he had not fallen upon days in which 
that form of writing was practically outworn ; 
and it is manifest that he would have been an 
admirable writer of familiar verse if he could 
have forgotten the fallacy (exposed by Johnson) 
that easy verse is to be written easily. Never- 
theless, in the Gothic romance which was sug- 
gested by his Gothic castle — for, to speak 
paradoxically, Strawberry Hill is almost as much 
as Walpole the author of the Castle ofOtranto — 
he managed to initiate a new form of fiction ; and 
by decorating "with gay strings the gatherings 
of Vertue," he preserved serviceably, in the 
Anecdotes of Painting, a mass of curious, if 
sometimes uncritical, information which, in 
other circumstances, must have been hope- 
lessly lost. If anything else of his professed 
literary work is worthy of recollection, it must 
be a happy squib such as the Letter of Xo Ho, 
a fable such as The Entail, or an essay such as 
that On Gardening, a subject of all others upon 
which he could speak with authority.* 

* Essai sur l'Art des Jardins Imprime a Strawberry Hill, par 

Modernes. Par M. Horace Wal- T. Kirgate; 1785,410. Every page 

pole, traduit en Francois par M. of French has an opposite one in 

le Due de Nivernois en 1784. English. 



336 Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 

But it is not by his professedly literary work 
that he has acquired the reputation which he 
retains and must continue to retain. It is as a 
letter-writer that he survives ; and it is upon the 
vast correspondence, of which, even now, we 
seem scarcely to have reached the limits, that is 
based his surest claim volitare per ora virum. 
The qualities which are his defects in more 
serious productions become merits in his corre- 
spondence ; or, rather, they cease to be defects. 
No one looks for prolonged effort in a gossip- 
ping epistle ; a weighty reasoning is less impor- 
tant than a light hand ; and variety pleases more 
surely than symmetry of structure. Among the 
little band of those who have distinguished 
themselves in this way, Walpole is in the fore- 
most rank ; nay, if wit and brilliancy, without 
gravity or pathos, are to rank highest, he is 
first. It matters nothing whether he wrote 
easily or with difficulty ; whether he did, or did 
not, make minutes of apt illustrations or descrip- 
tive incidents; the result is delightful. For 
diversity of interest and perpetual entertain- 
ment, for the constant surprises of an unique 
species of wit, for happy and unexpected turns 
of phrase, for graphic characterisation and clever 



Horace Walpole : A Memoir. 337 

anecdote, for playfulness, pungency, irony, per- 
siflage, there is nothing like his letters in Eng- 
lish. And when one remembers that, in addi- 
tion to all this, they constitute a sixty-years' 
social chronicle of a specially picturesque era 
by one of the most picturesque of picturesque 
chroniclers, there can be no need to bespeak 
any further suffrage for Horace Walpole's in- 
comparable correspondence. 




APPENDIX. 



APPENDIX. 



BOOKS PRINTED AT THE STRAWBERRY HILL PRESS. 

# * # The following list contains all the books men- 
tioned in the Description of the Villa of Mr. Horace 
Walpole, etc., 1784, together with those issued be- 
tween thatdate and Walpole's death. It does not include 
the several title-pages and labels which he printed 
from time to time, or the quatrains and verses pur- 
porting to be addressed by the Press to Lady Roch- 
ford, Lady Townshend, Madame de Boufflers, the Miss 
Berrys, and others. Nor does it comprise the pieces 
struck off by Mr. Kirgate, the printer, for the benefit 
of himself and his friends. On the other hand, all the 
works enumerated here are, with three exceptions, 
described from copies in the possession of the present 
writer or to be found in the British Museum and the 
Dyce and Forster Library at South Kensington. 

34i 



342 Appendix. 

1757. 

Odes by Mr. Gray. 4>wvavTa aovsTofci — Pindar, Olymp. 
II. [Strawberry Hill Bookplate.] Printed at Strawberry- 
Hill, for R. and J. Bods ley in Pall- Mall, MDCCLVII. 

Pp. 22 (last blank). Half-title,— " Odes by Mr. Gray. 
[Price one Shilling.] " 410. 1000 copies printed. "June 
25th, [1757] I erected a printing-press at my house at Straw- 
berry Hill." "Aug. 8th, I published two Odes by Mr. Gray, 
the first production of my press " {Short Notes). " And with 
what do you think we open? Cedite, Ro?tiani Impressores — 
with nothing under Graii Carmina. I found him [Gray] in 
town last week : he had brought his two Odes to be printed. 
I snatched them out of Dodsley's hands." . . {Walpole to 
Chute, 12 July, 1757). " I send you two copies (one for Dr. 
Cocchi) of a very honourable opening of my press — two 
amazing Odes of Mr. Gray ; they are Greek, they are Pindaric, 
they are sublime ! consequently I fear a little obscure " ( Wal- 
pole to Mann, 4 Aug., 1757). " You are very particular, I can 
tell you, in liking Gray's Odes — but you must remember 
that the age likes Akenside, and did like Thomson ! can the 
same people like both?" {Walpole to Montagu, 25 Aug., 
1757). 

To Mr. Gray, on his Odes. [By David Garrick.] 

Single leaf containing six quatrains (24 lines). 4to. Only six 
copies are said to have been printed. Of these, one is in the 
Dyce Collection at South Kensington. 

A Journey into England. By Paul Hentzner, in the year 
M.D.XC.VIII. [Strawberry Hill Bookplate.] Printed 
at Strawberry-Hill, MDCCLVII. 

Title, Dedication (2 leaves) ; pp. x — 103 ; Latin and English 
on opposite pages, 207 in all (last blank). Sm. 8vo. 220 copies 
printed. "In Oct., 1757, was finished at my press an edition 
of Hentznerus, translated by Mr. Bentley, to which I wrote 
an advertisement. I dedicated it to the Society of Antiqua- 
ries, of which I am a member " {Short Notes). "An edition 
of Hentznerus, with a version by Mr. Bentley, and a little 



Appendix. 343 

preface of mine, were prepared [i. e., as the first issue of the 
press], but are to wait [for Gray's Odes~\ " {Walpole to Chute, 
12 July, 1757). 

1758. 

A Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England, 
with Lists of their Works. Dove, diavolo ! Messer Ludo- 
vico, avete pigliato tante coglionerie ? Card. d'Este, to 
Ariosto. Vol. i. [Strawberry Hill Bookplate.] Printed 
at Strawberry-Hill. MDCCLVIII 

Vol. ii. [Strawberry Hill Bookplate.] Printed at 

Strawberry- Hill. MDCCLVIJI. 

Vol. i, — Title; Dedication of 2 leaves to Lord Hertford; 
Advertisement of viii pages ; pp. 220 (last blank) ; and un- 
paged Index. 8vo. 300 copies issued. A second edition, 
"corrected and enlarged," was printed in 1758 (but dated 
1759) in two vols, 8vo, " for R. and J. Dodsley in Pallmall; 
and J. Graham in the Strand." According to Baker {Cata- 
logue of Books, etc., printed at the Press at Strawberry Hill 
[1810J), 40 copies of a supplement or Postscript to the Royal 
and Noble Authors were printed by Kirgate in 1786. "In 
April, 1758, was finished the first impression of my ' Catalogue 
of Royal and Noble Authors,' which I had written the preced- 
ing year in less than five months " {Short Notes). " My book 
is marvellously in fashion, to my great astonishment. I did 
not expect so much truth and such notions of liberty would 
have made their fortune in this our day " ( Walpole to Montagu, 
4 May, 1758). "Dec. 5th [1758] was published the second 
edition of my ' Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors.' Two 
thousand were printed, but not at Strawberry Hill" {Short 
Notes). 

An Account of Russia as it was in the Year 17 10. By 
Charles Lord Whitworth. [Strawberry Hill Bookplate.] 
Printed at Strawberry-Hill. MDCCL VIII. 

Pp. xxiv — 160 (last blank). Sm. 8vo. 700 copies printed. 
"The beginning of October, [1758] I published Lord Whit- 
worth's account of Russia, to which I wrote the advertise- 
ment " {Short Notes). " A book has been left at your lady- 



344 Appendix. 



ship's house ; it is Lord Whitworth's Account of Russia " 
{Walpole to Lady Hervey, 17 Oct., 1758). Mr. (afterwards 
Lord) Whitworth was Ambassador to St. Petersburg in the 
reign of Peter the Great. 



The Mistakes; or, the Happy Resentment. A Comedy. 
By the late Lord * * * * [Henry Hyde, Lord Hyde and 
Cornbury]. London : Printed by S. Richardson, in the 
year 1758. 

Title ; List of Subscribers, pp. xvi ; Advertisement, Pro- 
logue, and Dramatis Persona:, 2 leaves; pp. 86 (last blank). 
Baker gives the following particulars from the Biograpkia 
Dramatica as to this book : — " The Author of this Piece was 
the learned, ingenious, and witty Lord Cornbury, but it 
was never acted. He made a present of it to that great 
Actress, Mrs. Porter, to make what Emolument she could 
by it. And that Lady after his Death, published it by Sub- 
scription, at Five Shillings, each Book, which was so much 
patronised by the Nobility and Gentry that Three Thousand 
Copies were disposed of. Prefixed to it was a Preface, by Mr. 
Horace Walpole, at whose Press at Strawberry-Hill it was 
printed." Baker adds, " Mr. Yardley, who, when living, kept 
a Bookseller's Shop in New-Inn Passage, confirmed this 
account, by asserting that he assisted in printing it at that 
Press." But Baker nevertheless prefixes an asterisk to the title 
which implies that it was " not printed for Mr. Walpole," and 
this probably accounts for Richardson's name on the title-page. 
By the subscription list, the Hon. Horace Walpole took 21 
copies, David Garrick, 38, and Mr. Samuel Richardson of 
Salisbury Court, 4. All Walpole says is, "About the same 
time [1758] Mrs. Porter published [for her benefit] Lord 
Hyde's play, to which I had written the advertisement" 
{Short Notes). 



A Parallel ; in the Manner of Plutarch : between a most 
celebrated Man of Florence ; and one, scarce ever heard 
of, in England. By the Reverend Mr. Spence. " — Parvis 
componere magna" — Virgil. [Portrait in circle of Maglia- 
becchi.] Printed at Strawberry-Hill by William Robinson; 



Appendix. 345 

and sold by Messieurs Dodsley, at Tu/Zy's Head, Pall Mall ; 
for the Benefit of Mr. Hill. MDCCL VIII. 

Pp. 104. Sm. 8vo. 700 copies printed. "1759. Feb. 2nd, 

1 published Mr. Spence's Parallel of Magliabecchi and Mr. 
Hill, a tailor of Buckingham ; calculated to raise a little sum 
of money for the latter poor man. Six hundred copies were 
sold in a fortnight, and it was reprinted in London " (Short 
Notes). " Mr. Spence's Magliabechi is published to-day 
from Strawberry; I believe you saw it, and shall have it; but 
'tis not worth sending you on purpose" (Walpole to Chute, 

2 Feb., 1759). 

Fugitive Pieces in Verse and Prose. Pereunlel imputantur. 
[Strawberry Hill Bookplate.] Printed at Strawberry -Hill, 
MDCCL VIII. 

Pp. vi — 220 (last blank), sm. 8vo. 200 copies printed. "In 
the summer of 1758, 1 printed some of my own Fugitive Pieces, 
and dedicated them to my cousin, General Conway " (Short 
Notes). " March 17, [1759,] I began to distribute some copies 
of my ' Fugitive Pieces,' collected and printed together at 
Strawberry Hill, and dedicated to General Conway" (ibid.). 
One of these, which is in the Forster Collection at South Ken- 
sington, went to Gray. "This Book (says a MS. inscription) 
once belonged to Gray the Poet, and has his autograph on the 
Title-page. I [i. e., George Daniel, of Canonbury] bought it at 
Messrs. Sotheby and Wilkinson's Sale Rooms for £1.19 on 
Thursday, 28 Augt. 1 851, from the valuable collection of Mr. 
Penn of Stoke." 

I76O. 

Catalogue of the Pictures and Drawings in the Holbein 
Chamber at Strawberry Hill. Strawberry-Hill, 1760. 
Pp. 8. 8vo. [Lowndes.] 

Catalogue of the Collections of Pictures of the Duke of 
Devonshire, General Guise, and the late Sir Paul Methuen. 
Strawberry-Hill, 1760. 

Pp.44. 8vo. 12 copies, printed on one side only. [Lowndes.] 
23 



346 Appendix. 

M. Annaei Lucani Pharsalia cum Notis Hugoni Grotii, et 
Richardi Bentleii. Multa su?it condonanda in opere pos- 
tvmo. In Librum iv, Nota 641. [Emblematical vignette.] 
Strawberry-Hill, MDCCLX. 

Title, Dedication (by Richard Cumberland to Halifax), and 
Advertisement {Ad Lectorem), 3 leaves ; pp. 526 (last blank). 
4to. 500 copies printed. Cumberland took up the editing 
when Bentley the younger resigned it. " I am just under- 
taking an edition of Lucan, my friend Mr. Bentley having in 
his possession his father's notes and emendations on the first 
seven books " ( Walpole to Zouch, 9 Dec. , 1 758). " I would not 
alone undertake to correct the press ; but I am so lucky as to 
live in the strictest friendship with Dr. Bentley's only son, who, 
to all the ornament of learning, has the amiable turn of mind, 
disposition, and easy wit " ( Walpole to Zouch, 12 Jan., 1759). 

Lucan is in poor forwardness. I have been plagued with a 
succession of bad printers, and am not got beyond the fourth 
book. It will scarce appear before next winter " ( Walpole to 
Zouch, 23 Dec, 1759). " My Lucan is finished, but will not be 
published till after Christmas" {Walpole to Zouch, 27 Nov., 
1760). " I have delivered to your brother . . . a Lucan, 
printed at Strawberry, which, I trust, you will think a handsome 
edition " ( Walpole to Mann, 27 Jan., 1761). 



1762. 

Anecdotes of Painting in England; with some Account of 
the principal Artists; and incidental Notes on other Arts; 
collected by the late Mr. George Vertue; and now di- 
gested and published from his original MSS. By Mr. 
Horace Walpole. Multa renascentur qua cecidere. Vol. I. 
[Device with Walpole's crest.] Printed by Thomas Farmer, 
at Strawberry-Hill, MDCCLXII. 

Le sachant Anglais, je crus qu'il m'alloil parler d" 1 edi- 
fices et de peintures. Nouvelle Eloise, vol. i, p. 245. Vol. 
II. [Device with Walpole's crest.] Printed by Thomas 
Farmer, at Strawberry -Hill, MDCCLXII. 



Appendix. 347 



Vol. III. Motto of six lines from Prior's Protogenes 

and Apelles. Strawberry-Hill : Printed in the year 
MDCCLXIII. 

To which is added the History of the Modern Taste 



in Gardening. The Glory <?/"Lebanon shall come unto thee, 
the Fir- Tree, the Pine- Tree, and the Box together, to beautify 
the place of my Sanctuary, and I will make the Place of my 
Feet glorious. Isaiah, lx. 13. Volume the Fourth and 
last. Strawberry- Hill : Printed by Thomas Kirgate, 
MDCCLXXL 

Vol. i, — pp. xiv — 168, with Appendix and Index unpaged. 
Vol. ii, — Title; pp. 158, with Appendix and Index un- 
paged ; and " Additional Lives to First Edition of Anecdotes 
of Painting in England," pp. 12. Vol. iii, — Title; pp. 155, 
with Appendix and Index unpaged ; and " Additional Lives 
to the First Edition of Anecdotes of Painting in England," 
pp.4. Vol. iv, — pp. x — 52; Appendix of one leaf ("Prints 
by or after Hogarth, discovered since the Catalogue was 
finished"), and Index unpaged. The volumes are 4to, with 
many portraits and plates. 600 copies were printed. The 
fourth volume was in type in 1770, but not issued until Oct., 
1780. It was dedicated to the Duke of Richmond — Lady Her- 
vey, to whom the three earlier volumes had been inscribed, 
having died in 1 768. A second edition of the first three vol- 
umes was printed by Thomas Kirgate at Strawberry Hill in 
1765. " Sept. 1st [1759]. I began to look over Mr. Vertue's 
MSS., which I bought last year for one hundred pounds, in 
order to compose the Lives of English Painters " {Short Notes). 
" 1760, Jan. 1st. I began the Lives of English Artists, from 
Vertue's MSS. (that is, 'Anecdotes of Painting,' &c.) " {ibid). 
" Aug. 14th. Finished the first volume of my * Anecdotes of 
Painting in England.' Sept. 5th, began the second volume. 
Oct. 23d, finished the second volume " {ibid). "1761. Jan. 
4th, began the third volume "{ibid). "June 29th, resumed 
the third volume of my ' Anecdotes of Painting,' which I had 
laid aside after the first day " {ibid). " Aug. 22nd, finished the 
third volume of my 'Anecdotes of Painting'" {ibid). "The 
'Anecdotes of Painting' have succeeded to the press: I have 
finished two volumes; but as there will at least be a third, I 
am not determined whether I shall not wait to publish the 
whole together. You will be surprised, I think, to see what a 



348 Appendix. 

quantity of materials the industry of one man (Vertue) could 
amass ! " ( Walpole to Zouch, 17 Nov., 1760). " You drive your 
expectations much too fast, in thinking my ' Anecdotes of Paint- 
ing' are ready to appear, in demanding three volumes. You 
will see but two, and it will be February first" {Walpole to 
Montagu, 30 Dec, 1761 ). "I am now publishing the third 
volume, and another of Engravers " ( Walpole to Dalrymple, 
31 Jan., 1764). " I have advertised my long-delayed last vol- 
ume of ' Painters ' to come out, and must be in town to dis- 
tribute it " {Walpole to Lady Ossory, 23 Sept., 1780). " I have 
left with Lord Harcourt for you my new old last volume of 
' Painters ' " ( Walpole to Mason, 13 Oct., 1780). 

I763. 

A Catalogue of Engravers, who have been born, or resided 
in England; digested by Mr. Horace Walpole from the 
MSS. of Mr. George Vertue; to which is added an 
Account of the Life and Works of the latter. And Art 
reflected images to Art. . . . Pope. Strawberry- Hill : 
Printed in the Year MDCCLXIII. 

Title ; pp. 128, last page dated " Oct. 10th, 1762 " ; " Life of 
Mr. George Vertue," pp. 14; "List of Vertue's Works," 
pp. 20, last page dated "Oct. 22d, 1762"; Index of Names 
of Engravers, unpaged. 4to. "Aug. 2nd [1762,] began the 
'Catalogue of Engravers.' October loth, finished it " {Short 
Notes'). "The volume of Engravers is printed off, and has 
been some time; I only wait for some of the plates " {Wal- 
pole to Cole, 8 Oct., 1763). "I am now publishing the third 
volume [of the 'Anecdotes of Painting'], and another of 
Engravers" {Walpole to Dalrymple, 31 Jan., 1764). 

I764. 

Poems by Anna Chamber, Countess Temple. [Plate of 
Strawberry Hill.] Strawberry-Hill : Printed in the Year 
MDCCLXIV. 

Pp. 34. 4to. 100 copies printed by Prat. " I shall send you, 
too, Lady Temple's Poems" {Walpole to Montagu, 16 July, 
1764). 



Appendix. 349 

The Magpie and her Brood, a Fable, from the Tales of 
Bonaventure des Periers, Valet de Chambre to the Queen 
of Navarre; addressed to Miss Hotham. 

4 pp., containing 72 lines, — initialed " H. W." 4to. " Oct. 
I 5 t ' 1 > [1764] wrote the fable of 'The Magpie and her Brood' 
for Miss Hotham, then near eleven years old, great niece of 
Henrietta Hobart, Countess Dowager of Suffolk. It was 
taken from Les Nouvelles Recreations de Bonaventure des 
Periers, Valet-de-Chambre to the Queen of Navarre " {Short 
Notes). 

The Life of Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbury, written by 
Himself. [Plate of Strawberry Hill.] Strawberry-Hill : 
Printed by Prat in the Year MDCCLXIV. 

Title, Dedication, and Advertisement, 5 leaves; pp. 172 
(last blank). Folding plate portrait. 4to. 200 copies 
printed. "1763. Beginning of September wrote the Dedi- 
cation and Preface to Lord Herbert's Life" {Short Notes). 
" It will not be long before I have the pleasure of sending 
you by far the most curious and entertaining book that my 
press has produced. . . . It is the life of the famous Lord 
Herbert of Cherbury, and written by himself — of the con- 
tents I will not anticipate one word " {Letter to Mason, 29 
Dec, 1763). "The thing most in fashion is my edition of 
Lord Herbert's Life; people are mad after it, I believe 
because only two hundred were printed" {Letter to Mon- 
tagu, 16 Dec, 1764). "This singular work was printed 
from the original MS. in 1764, at Strawberry-hill, and is 
perhaps the most extraordinary account that ever was given 
seriously by a wise man of himself " (Walpole, Works, 1798, 
i- 363)- 

1768 

Cornelie, Vestale. Tragedie. [By the President Henault.] 
Imprimee a Straivberry-Hill, MDCCLXVIII. 

Pp. vi — 92 (last blank). 8vo. 200 copies printed ; 150 went 

to Paris. Kirgate printed it. " My press is revived, and is 

printing a French play written by the old President Henault. It 

was damned many years ago at Paris, and yet I think is better 

23* 



35° Appendix. 

than some that have succeeded, and much better than any of 
our modern tragedies. I print it to please the old man, as he 
was exceedingly kind to me at Paris ; but I doubt whether he 
will live till it is finished. He is to have a hundred copies, and 
there are to be but an hundred more, of which you shall have 
one" {Letter to Montagu, 15 April, 1768). President Henault 
died November, 1770, aged eighty-six. 

The Mysterious Mother. A Tragedy. By Mr. Horace 
Walpole. Sit mihi fas audita loqiti ! Virgil, fainted 
at Strawberry- Hill : MDCCLXVIII. 

Title, Erratum, " Persons " (2 leaves) ; pp. 120, with Post- 
script, pp. 10. Sm. 8vo. 50 copies printed. " March 15, 
[1768] I finished a tragedy called ' The Mysterious Mother,' 
which I had begun Dec. 25, 1766" {Short Notes). "I thank 
you for myself, not for my Play. ... I accept with great 
thankfulness what you have voluntarily been so good as to do 
for me ; and should ' the Mysterious Mother ' ever be performed 
when I am dead, it will owe to you its presentation " ( Walpole 
to Mason, 11 May, 1769). 



I769 

Poems by the Reverend Mr. Hoyland. Printed at Straw- 
berry-Hill : MDCCLXIX. 

Title, Advertisement (2 leaves) ; pp. 20 (last blank). 8vo. 
300 copies printed. " I enclose a short Advertisement for Mr. 
Hoyland's poems. I mean by it to tempt people to a little 
more charity, and to soften to him, as much as I can, the humil- 
iation of its being asked for him ; if you approve it, it shall be 
prefixed to the edition " ( Walpole to Mason, 5 April, 1769). 



1770 

Reply to the Observations of the Rev. Dr. Milles, Dean of 
Exeter, and President of the Society of Antiquaries, on the 
Ward Robe Account. 



Appendix. 3 5 i 

Pp. 24. Six copies printed, dated 28 August, 1770 
[Baker]. " In the summer of this year [1770] wrote an answer 
to Dr. Milles' remarks on my ' Richard the Third'" {Short 
Notes). 

1772 

Copies of Seven Original Letters from King Edward VI to 
Barnaby Fitzpatrick. Strawberry-Hill. Printed in the 
Year M.DCC.LXXII. 

Pp. viii — 14. 4to. 200 copies printed. " 1771. End of Sep- 
tember, wrote the Advertisement to the ' Letters of King 
Edward the Sixth ' " {Short A T otes). " I have printed • King 
Edward's Letters,' and will bring you a copy " ( Walpole to 
Mason, 6 July, 1772). 

Miscellaneous Antiquities ; or, a Collection of Curious Pa- 
pers : either republished from Scarce Tracts or now first 
printed from original MSS. Number I. To be continued 
occasionally. Invenies illic et festa domestica vobis. Scepe 
tibi Pater est, sape legendus Avus. Ovid. Fast. lib. 1. 
Strawberry - Hill : Printed by Thomas Kir gate, M.DCC. 
LXXII. 

Pp. iv — 48. 4to. 500 copies printed. " I have since begun 
a kind of Desiderata Curiosa, and intend to publish it in num- 
bers, as I get materials ; it is to be an Hospital of Foundlings ; 
and though I shall not take in all that offer, there will be no 
enquiry into the nobility of the parents ; nor shall I care how 
heterogeneous the brats are " ( Walpole to Mason, 6 July, 1772). 
" By that time too I shall have the first number of my ' Mis- 
cellaneous Antiquities ' ready. The first essay is only a repub- 
lication of some tilts and tournaments " ( Walpole to Mason, 21 
July, 1772). 

Miscellaneous Antiquities ; or, a Collection of Curious Pa- 
pers : either republished from Scarce Tracts, or now first 
printed from original MSS. Number II. To be continued 
occasionally. Invenies illic et festa domestica vobis. Scepe 
tibi Pater est, scepe legendus Avus. Ovid. Fast. lib. 1. 



3 5 2 Appendix. 

Strawberry - Hill : Printed by Thomas Kir gate, M.DCC. 
LXXII. 

Pp.62. 4to. 500 copies printed. "In July [1772] wrote 
the " Life of Sir Thomas Wyat [the Elder], No. II. of my edi- 
tion of' Miscellaneous Antiquities ' " {Short Notes). 

M6moires du Comte de Grammont, par Monsieur le Comte 
Antoine Hamilton. Nouvelle Edition, augmentee de 
Notes & d'Eclairecissemens necessaires par M. Horace 
Walpole. Des gens qui ecrivent pour le Comte de Gram- 
mont, peuvent co?npter sur quelque indulgence. V. l'Epitre 
prelim, p. xviii. Imprimee a Strawberry-Hill, M.DCC. 
LXXII. 

Pp. xxiv — 294 (last blank). Portraits of Hamilton, Mdlle. 
d'Hamilton, and Philibert Comte de Grammont. 4to. 100 
copies printed; 30 went to Paris. It was dedicated to Madame 
du Deffand, as follows : — " VEditeurvous consacre cette edition, 
comme un monument de son amitie, de son admiration, et de son 
respect, a vous dont les grdces, V esprit, et le gout retracent au 
siecle present le siecle de Louis XIV.,et les agre'mens de Pauteur 
de ces Memoires." " I want to send you these [the Miscella- 
neous Antiquities] . . . and a ' Grammont,' of which I 
have printed only a hundred copies, and which will be ex- 
tremely scarce, as twenty-five copies are gone to France " 
( Walpole to Cole, 8 Jan., 1773). 



1774. 

A Description of the Villa of Horace Walpole. [Plate of 
Strawberry Hill.] A Description of the Villa of Horace 
Walpole, youngest son of Sir Robert Walpole Earl of 
Orford, at Strawberry-Hill, near Twickenham. With an 
Inventory of the Furniture, Pictures, Curiosities, &c. 
Strawberry-Hill : Printed by Thomas Kirgate, M.DCC. 
LXXIV. 

Two titles ; pp. 120 (last blank). 4to. 100 copies printed, 
6 on large paper. Many copies have the following, — " Appen- 
dix. Pictures and Curiosities added since the Catalogue was 



Appendix. 353 

printed," pp. 121-148 (last blank); "Additions since the 
Appendix," pp. 149-152; "More Additions," pp. 153-158. 
Baker speaks of an earlier issue of 65 pp. which we have not 
met with. Lowndes {Appendix to Bibliographer 's Manual, 1864, 
p. 239) states that it was said by Kirgate to have been used by 
the servants in showing the house, and differed entirely from 
the editions of 1774 and 1784. 



1775. 

To Mrs. Crewe. [Verses by Charles James Fox.] N. D. 

Pp. 2. Single leaf. 4to. 300 copies printed. Walpole 
speaks of these in a letter to Mason dated 12 June, 1774; 
and he sends a copy of them to him, 27 May, 1775. Mrs. 
Crewe, the Amoret addressed, was the daughter of Fulke Gre- 
ville, and the wife of J. Crewe. She was painted by Reynolds 
as an Alpine shepherdess. 

Dorinda, a Town Eclogue. [By General Richard Fitz- 
patrick, brother of the Earl of Ossory.] [Plate of Straw- 
berry Hill.] Strawberry-Hill : Printed by Thomas Kirgate. 
M.DCC.LXXV. 

Pp., 8. 4to. 300 copies printed. "I shall send you soon 
Fitzpatrick's 'Town Eclogue,' from my own furnace. The 
verses are charmingly smooth and easy . . ." " P. S. Here is 
the Eclogue " {Letter to Mason, 12 June, 1774). 



1778. 

The Sleep-walker, a Comedy: in two Acts. Translated 
from the French [of M. Pont de Veyle], in March, 
M.DCC.LXXVIII. [By Lady Craven, afterwards Mar- 
gravine of Anspach.] Strawberry-Hill : Printed by T. 
Kirgate, M.DCC.LXXVIII. 

Pp. viii — 56. 8vo. 75 copies printed. At the back of the 
Title is a quatrain by Walpole to Lady Craven, "on her 
Translation of the Somnambule." "I will send . . . for 



354 Appendix. 



yourself a translation of a French play. ... It is not 
for your reading, but as one of the Strawberry editions, and 
one of the rarest; for I have printed but seventy-five copies. 
It was to oblige Lady Craven, the translatress . . . " ( Wal- 
pole to Cole, 22 Aug., 1778). 



1779 

A Letter to the Editor of the Miscellanies of Thomas 
Chatterton. Strawberry-Hill : Printed by T. Kirgate, 
M.DCC.LXXIX. 

Half-title ; Title ; and pp. 56 (last blank). 8vo. 200 copies 
printed. "1779. In the preceding autumn had written a 
defence of myself against the unjust aspersions in the Preface 
to the Miscellanies of Chatterton. Printed 200 copies at 
Strawberry Hill this January, and gave them away. It was 
much enlarged from what I had written in July" {Short Notes). 



1780 

The Lady Horatia Waldegrave on the Death of the Duke 
of Ancaster. [Verses by Mr. Charles Miller.] N. D. 

Pp. 4 (last blank), dated at end "A D. 1779." 4to. 150 
copies printed. " I enclose a copy of verses, which I have just 
printed at Strawberry, only a few copies, and which I hope you 
will think pretty. They were written three months ago by Mr. 
Charles Miller, brother of Sir John, on seeing Lady Horatia 
at Nuneham. The poor girl is better" (Walpole to Lady 
Ossory, 29 Jan., 1780). Lady Horatia Waldegrave was to have 
been married to the Duke of Ancaster, who died in 1779. 



I78l 

The Muse recalled, an Ode, occasioned by the Nuptials of 
Lord Viscount Althorp and Miss Lavinia Bingham, 
eldest daughter of Charles Lord Lucan, March vi, 
M.DCC.LXXXI. By William Jones, Esq. (afterwards 



Appendix. 355 

Sir William Jones). Strawberry - Hill : Printed by Thomas 
Kirgate, MDCCLXXXI. 

Title, pp. 8. 4to. 250 copies printed. There is a well-known 

portrait of Lavinia Bingham by Reynolds, in which she wears 

a straw hat with a blue ribbon. 

A Letter from the Honourable Thomas Walpole, to the Gov- 
ernor and Committee of the Treasury of the Bank of 
England. Strawberry-Hill : Printed by Thomas Kirgate, 
M.DCC.LXXXI. 

Title, and pp. 16 (last blank). 4to. 120 copies printed. 

I784. 

A Description of the Villa of Mr. Horace Walpole, youngest 
son of Sir Robert Walpole, Earl of Orford, at Strawberry 
Hill, near Twickenham, Middlesex. With an Inventory 
of the Furniture, Pictures, Curiosities, &c. Strawberry - 
Hill: Printed by Thomas Kirgate, M.DCC.LXXXIV. 

Pp. iv — 92. 27 plates. " Curiosities added since this Book 
was completed," pp. 93-94. " More Additions," pp. 95-6. 4to. 
200 copies printed. " The next time he [Sir Horace Mann's 
nephew] visits you, I may be able to send you a description of 
my Galleria, — I have long been preparing it, and it is almost 
finished, — with some prints, which, however, I doubt, will 
convey no very adequate idea of it " ( Walpole to Mann, 30 
Sept., 1784). " In the list for which Lord Ossory asks, is the 
Description of this place ; now, though printed, I have entirely 
kept it up [i. e., held it back~\,z.x\& mean to do so while I live." 
{Walpole to Lady Ossory, 15 Sept., 1787). 

1785. 

Hieroglyphic Tales. Schah Baham ne comprenoit jamais bien 
que les choses absurdes et hors de toute vraisemblance. Le 
Sopha, p. 5. Strawberry-Hill : Printed by T. Kirgate, 
MDCCLXXXV. 



356 Appendix. 

Pp. x — 52 (last blank). 8vo. Walpole's own MS. note in 
the Dyce example says, " Only six copies of this were printed, 
besides the revised copy." "1772. This year, the last, and 
sometime before, wrote some Hieroglyphic Tales. There are 
only five " {Short Notes). " I have some strange things in my 
drawer, even wilder than the ' Castle of Otranto,' and called 
' Hieroglyphic Tales,' but they were not written lately, nor in 
the gout, nor, whatever they may seem, written when I was 
out of my senses" {Walpole to Cole, 28 Jan., 1779). "This 
[he is speaking of Darwin's Botanic Garden] is only the 
Second Part; for, like my King's eldest daughter in the ' Hier- 
oglyphic Tales,' the First Part is not born yet : no matter " 
( Walpole to the Miss Berrys, 28 April, 1789). 

Essay on Modern Gardening, by Mr. Horace Walpole. 
[Strawberry Hill Bookplate.] Essai sur l'Art des Jardins 
Modernes, par M. Horace Walpole, traduit en Francois 
by M le Due de Nivernois, en MDCCLXXXIV. Im- 
prime a Strawberry-Hill, par T. Kir gate, MDCCLXXXV. 

Two titles ; and pp. 95 (last blank). French and English 
text on opposite pages. 4to. 400 copies printed. " How 
may I send you a new book printed here ? . . It is the trans- 
lation of my ' Essay on Modern Gardens ' by the Due de Niver- 
nois. . . You will find it a most beautiful piece of French, of 
the genuine French spoken by the Due de la Rochefoucault 
and Madame de Sevigne, and not the metaphysical galimatias 
of La Harpe and Thomas, &c, which Madame du Deffand pro- 
tested she did not understand. The versions of Milton and 
Pope are wonderfully exact and poetic and elegant, and the 
fidelity of the whole translation, extraordinary " ( Walpole to 
Lady Ossory, 17 Sept., 1785). 

1789 

Bishop Bonner's Ghost. [By Hannah More.] [Plate of 
Strawberry Hill.] Strawberry-Hill : Printed by T/iomas 
Kir gate, MDCCLXXXIX. 

Title and Argument, 2 leaves, pp. 4. 4to. 96 copies printed; 
2 on brown paper. It was written when Hannah More ("my 
imprimee" as Walpole calls her) was on a visit to Dr. Beilby 



Appendix. 357 

Porteus, Bishop of London, at his palace at Fulham, June, 1789. 
" I will forgive all your enormities if you will let me print your 
poem. I like to filch a little immortality out of others, and the 
Strawberry press could never have a better opportunity " 
{Walpole to Hannah More, 23 June, 1789). "The enclosed 
copy of verses pleased me so much, that, though not intended 
for publication, I prevailed on the authoress, Miss Hannah 
More, to allow me to take off a small number. . . " I have 
been disappointed of the completion of • Bonner's Ghost,' by 
my rolling press being out of order, and was forced to send 
the whole impression to town to have the copper-plate taken 
oft." " Kirgate has brought the whole impression, and I shall 
have the pleasure of sending your Ladyship this with a ' Bon- 
ner's Ghost ' to-morrow morning " ( Walpole to Lady Ossory, 
16-18 July, 1789). 

The History of Alcidalis and Zelida. A Tale of the Four- 
teenth Century. [By Vincent de Voiture.] Printed at 
Strawberry -Hill. MDCCLXXXIX. 

Pp. 96 (last blank). 8vo. This is a translation of Voiture's 
unfinished Histoire cf Alcidalis et de Zelide. {See Nouvelles 
CEuvres de Monsieur de Voiture. Nouvelle Edition. A Paris, 
chez Louis Bilaine, au Palais, au second Pilier de la grand' 
Salle, a la Palme & au grand Cesar, MDCLXXII. ) There 
is a copy in the Dyce Collection. Another was sold in 1823 
with the books of John Trotter Brockett, in whose catalogue 
it was said to be "surreptitiously printed." Kirgate had a 
copy, although Baker does not mention it. 



Doubtful Date. 

Verses sent to Lady Charles Spencer [Mary Beauclerc] 
with a painted Taffety, occasioned by saying she was 
low in Pocket and could not buy a new Gown. 

Single leaf. Baker says these were by Anna Chamber, 
Countess Temple. 

Besides the above, Walpole printed at his press in 1770 
Vols, i and ii of a 4to edition of his works. 



INDEX. 



INDEX. 



JEdes Walpoliance, The, 94, 

95, 96, 329. 
Amelia, the Princess, 207, 265, 

275. 
American Colonies, the war 

with the, 292, 332. 
An Account of the Giants, 224. 
Anecdotes of Painting, 174, 

183, 253, 282, 335. 
Ashe, Miss, 156, 157, 158, 159, 

160. 
Ashton, Thomas, 27, 28, 29, 

76, 77- 

Balmerino, Lord, trial and 
execution of, 1 16-122. 

Beauclerk, Lady Diana, 192, 
194, 229, 283, 300, 326. 

Beauties, The, 128, 129. 

Beauty Room, the, 249. 

Benedict XIV., Pope, 65. 

Bentley, Richard, 165, 166, 
178, 180, 194, 253, 261. 

Berry, the Misses Mary and 
Agnes, 274, 276, 285, 298, 
299> 3°°> 3°i> 3°2, 304, 
305,308,314,315,317,325, 
33i, 334. 

Bland, Henry, 22. 

Bologna, visited by Walpole, 

56, 57, 58- 
Bracegirdle, Anne, 106, 107. 
Burnet, Bishop Gilbert, 26, 255. 



Burney, Frances, 229, 297. 
Byng, Admiral, 174, 175. 

Castle of Otranto, The, 194, 
195, 196, 197, 198, 200, 
230. 

Catalogue of Engravers, 188. 

Catalogue of Royal and Noble 
Authors, 17 4, 182, 183, 
185. 

Catalogue of Strawberry Hill, 
301. 

Charles X. (Comte d'Artois), 
209. 

Chartreuse, La Grande, visited 
by Walpole and Gray, 53. 

Chartreux, Convent of the, de- 
scribed by Walpole, 49, 50. 

Chatterton, Thomas, 231, 232, 
233, 234, 235. 

Chesterfield, Philip Dormer 
Stanhope, Earl of, 109, 
160, 214; his Letters paro- 
died by Walpole, 277. 

Choiseul, Mme. la Duchesse 
de, 211, 213, 216, 250. 

Christopher Inn, the, 27, 28. 

Chudleigh, Elizabeth, Duchess 
of Kingston, 157, 267. 

Churchill, Lady Mary (Maria), 
64, 81, 85, 124, 248. 

Chute, John, 67, 87, 146, 147, 
148, 163, 208, 246. 



24 



361 



362 



Index. 



Clement XII., Pope, 60. 

Clinton, Henry, Earl of Lin- 
coln, 71. 

Clive, Kitty, 106, 150, 162, 
168, 175, 228 ; bon ?not of, 
217 ; allusions to, 252, 255 ; 
death of, 295. 

Cocchi, Dr. Antonio, 71. 

Coke, Lady Mary, 206. 

Cole, William, 23, 29, 139, 194, 
244, 325. 

Congreve, William, 106. 

Conway, Henry, 23, 45, 50, 
5 X > S3, 54, 106, no, 114, 
115, 116, 129, 136, 182, 218, 

239- 

Cope, Gen. Sir John, 113. 

Crawford, James, 215. 

Culloden Moor, the battle of, 
114, 116. 

Cumberland, William, Duke 
of, 30, 109, 114, 115, 123, 
136, 149, 151, 207. 

Cunningham, Peter, 20; his 
account of a drive with 
Walpole, 264, 265, 266, 
267; his specimens of Wal- 
pole's letters, 295 ; quoted, 
250, 268, 324, 325. 

Damer, Anna (Miss Conway), 
242, 283, 308. 

Deffand, Mme. du (Marie de 
Vichy-Chamrond), 2 13,250; 
Walpole's first impression 
of, 213, 214; her conquest 
of Walpole, 214; Walpole's 
letter to Gray concerning, 
214, 215 ; her fondness for 



Walpole, 216; the episode 
of the snuff-box, 216 ; Wal- 
pole's second visit to, 222, 
223; death of, 288, 292; 
Walpole's letters to, 288, 
289 ; Walpole's adieu to, 
291 ; will of, 292. 

Delenda est Oxonia, 153. 

Dodington, Bubb, 116, 149. 

Dryden, John, imitated by 
Walpole, 78 ; claimed as 
great-uncle by Catherine 
Shorter, 249. 

Easton Neston (Northampton- 
shire), 33. 
Eftitaphium ViviAiictoris, 304. 
Eton College, 21-27. 

Falkirk, the battle of, 1 14. 
Fielding, Henry, 98, 106, 193, 

194, 267, 326. 
Fielding, William, 193. 
Florence, visited by Walpole 

and Gray, 58, 59, 60. 
Fontenoy, the battle of, no, 

in, 112, 128. 
Foote, Samuel, 210. 
Forcalquier, Mme. de, 211. 
Fortescue, Lucy, 129, 130. 
Fox, Charles James, his verses 

on Mrs. Crewe, 281. 
Franklyn, Richard, 140, 152. 
Fraser, Simon, Lord Lovat, 

122. 
Frederick, Prince of Wales. 

(See Wales.) 
Freethinking in France, 204, 

207. 



Index. 



163 



French Court, presentation of 
Walpole at the, 207, 208, 
209. 

Garrick, David, 106, 169, 178, 
22 1 . 

Genlis, Stephanie Felicite, 
Mme. de, 209, 296, 297. 

Geoffrin, Madame, 212, 218. 

George I., Walpole's visit to, 
18, 19, 20; the story of 
the raven, 327. (See Rem- 
iniscences.) 

George II., 81. (See Reminis- 
cences.) 

George III. (See Memoirs.) 

Goldsmith, Oliver, 30, 46, 129, 
175, 176, 234, 282; Wal- 
pole's contempt for, 279, 
326. 

Gordon Riots, the, 293. 

Granby, Lord, 158, 160. 

Gray, Thomas, at Eton, 26, 27, 
30, 35 ; travels with Wal- 
pole, 43, 44, 46, 47 ; Ver- 
sailles described by, 47, 48 ; 
at Rheims, 51 ; at Lyons, 
52 ; at La Grande Char- 
treuse, 53; in Italy, 55, 56, 
58, 59, 60, 61, 64, 66, 67, 
68, 75 ; his misunderstand- 
ing with Walpole, 67, 68, 69, 
70; subsequent reconcilia- 
tion, 70, 163; praises Wal- 
pole's verse, 77 ; quoted, 
36,44,45,46,47,48,51,52, 
56,58,66,77, 106, 121, 130, 
143, 163, 164, 166, 180, 181, 
256; resumes his intimacy 
24* 



with Walpole, 127, 130, 
210 ; visits Strawberry Hill, 
163 ; his indebtedness to 
Walpole, 164: his Elegy 
published by Dodsley, 164 ; 
the Poemata-Grayo-Bentle- 
iana, 165 ; publication of 
the Odes at Strawberry Hill, 
174, 180, 181 ; detects the 
Rowley forgeries, 232 ; por- 
trait of, 252 ; Walpole's re- 
lations with, 326. 
Grenville, George, 331. 

Harrison, Audrey, Lady 
Townshend, 126, 189. 

Hawkins, Miss, 192, 284; her 
description of Walpole, 3 19, 
320, 321. 

Henault, Charles Jean Fran- 
cois, President, 213, 219, 
223, 231, 250. 

Hervey, Baron, 151; said to be 
Walpole's father, 14. 

Hervey, Lady, 149, 208, 211, 
212, 240, 261. 

Hill, Robert, "the learned 
tailor," 182. 

Historic Doubts on Richard 
III., 225, 226, 277. 

Hogarth, William, 88, 98, 194, 
253, 260, 282. 

Houghton, the seat of the 
Walpoles, 11, 34, 84, 85, 
87, 88, 89, 90, 99 ; the 
Houghton pictures sold to 
Catherine of Russia, 87, 
286, 287; Walpole buried 
at, 307. 



3 6 4 



Index. 



Hume, David, 204, 207, 217, 

218, 219, 220. 
Hyde Park, robbers in, 153, 

154. 

Inn, the Christopher, 27, 

28. 
Inscription for the Neglected 

Column, 79. 

Jennings, Frances, Duchess of 

Tyrconnell, anecdote of, 

17; head of, 260. 
Jenyns, Soame, quoted, 155, 

160. 
Jephson, Capt. Robert, 278, 

279. 
Johnson, Samuel, 70, 107, 277, 

326. 

Kendal, the Duchess of, 18, 

265, 327. 
Ker, Lord Robert, 115. 
Kilmarnock, Earl, 115; trial 

and execution of, 117, 118, 

119, 120, 121, 122. 
King's College, Cambridge, 

29. 30, 3i 5 42. 
Kirgate, Thomas, 183, 230, 

276. 

Lens, Bernard, 30. 
Lessons for the Day, 93. 
Letter from Xo Ho, 175, 176, 

177, 335- 

Louis XVI. (Due de Berry), 
209. 

Louis XVIII. (Comte de Pro- 
vence), 209. 



Macaulay, Lord, 266; reviews 
Lord Dover's edition of 
Walpole's letters to Mann, 
311, 312, 313; letters to 
Hannah Macaulay quoted, 
313, 314; Lady Holland 
irritated by, 315; his opin- 
ion of Walpole, 316, 317. 

McLean, James, robs Walpole, 
153,154, 155; is imprisoned, 
155 ; becomes a fashionable 
lion, 155 ; is executed, 155. 

Mann, Sir Horace, 58, 59, 62, 
79, 87, 239, 294 ; death of, 
295 ; Walpole's affection 
for, 326. 

Mason, Rev. William, 68, 232, 
240. 

Memoirs of the Reign of King 
George III., 224, 333. 

Middleton, Dr. Conyers, 327 ; 
praises Walpole's attain- 
ments, 76. 

Montagu, Lieut. -Gen. Charles, 
K. C. B., 24. 

Montagu, Brig. -Gen. Edward, 
24. 

Montagu, George, M. P., 24, 
27,31, 43, 222, 239, 326. 

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 
14, 63, 162 ; described by 
Walpole, 64, 65, 67; quoted, 
65, 127. 

Mont Cenis, 55. 

Moore, Edward, 160. 

More, Hannah, 297, 298, 303, 

325- 
Miintz (German artist), 167, 
174, 178, 249, 321. 



Index. 



365 



Mysterious Mother, The, 225 
227, 228 ; Byron's praise of, 
229 ; printed at the Straw- 
berry Hill press, 230 ; illus- 
trated by Lady Di Beau- 
clerk, 284. 

Nature will Prevail, 280. 

Neale, Betty, 159. 

Neuhoff, Baron ("Theodore, 
King of Corsica"), 161, 
174. 

Nolkejumskoi. (See Cumber- 
land, William, Duke of.) 

Officina Arbuteana. (See 
Strawberry Hill.) 

Orford, George, third Earl of 
(nephew of Horace Wal- 
pole), 87, 173,240, 285, 286, 
287, 302. 

Orford, Horace, fourth Earl 
of. (See Walpole, Ho- 
race. ) 

Orford, Robert, first Earl of. 
(See Walpole, Sir Robert.) 

Orford, Robert, second Earl 
of. (See Walpole, Robert.) 

Ossory, Lady, 240; letters of 
Walpole to, 260, 274, 286, 
287, 292, 299, 306, 307, 320. 

Paris, Walpole's first visit to, 
45, 46; state of society in, 
203, 204, 205 ; second visit 
to, 206, 209, 210, 211, 212, 
213, 214, 215, 216; third 
visit to, 222, 223, 224; 
fourth visit to, 289. 



Parish Register of Twicken- 
ham, The, 191, 192, 194, 
285. 

Parodies by Walpole, 96, 277. 

Patapan, 85. 

Petersham, Lady Caroline, 
156, 157, 158, 159, 160,326. 

Picture Gallery at Houghton, 
87, 88, 89, 286, 287. 

Pinkerton, John : his Walpoli- 
ana quoted, 13, 20, 107, 
258, 298, 321, 322, 323, 
324 ; a favourite of Wal- 
pole, 296 ; his description 
of Walpole, 321, 322, 323, 

324- 
Pomfret, Lady, 62, 63, 64, 65, 

120. 
Pope, Alexander, 127, 137, 

168, 254. 
Preston Pans, the battle of, 

ii3- 
Prevost d'Exiles, M. l'Abbe 

Antoine Francois, 46. 
Prior, Matthew, criticised by 

Walpole, 94, 95. 
Pulteney, William, Earl of 

Bath, 81, 82, 184, 265. 

Quadruple Alliance, the, 24; 

ended, 29. 
Queensberry, the Duke of, 267. 
Quinault, Jeanne Francoise, 

" 46. 

Radnor, Lord, his Chinese sum- 
mer house, 148. 

Ranelagh Gardens, the, 107, 
108, 109. 



3 66 



Index. 



Reminiscences of the Courts of 
George the I and II., writ- 
tenfor the MissesBerry, 301. 

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 282. 

Richardson, Samuel, 204, 207. 

Robinson, William, 178, 179, 
180, 183, 189. 

Rochford, Lady, 189, 190. 

Rousseau, Jean- Jacques, 217, 
218; sham letter from Fred- 
erick the Great to, 218, 219; 
anger of, 219; his quarrel 
with Hume, 220. 

Saint Cyr, Walpole's visit to, 
223. 

Saunderson, Professor Nich- 
olas, 30, 31. 

Scott, Samuel, 168. 

Scott, Sir Walter, his study of 
the Castle of Otranto, 198. 

Selwyn, George Augustus, 23, 
166, 205, 267. 

Sermon on Painting, The, 90, 

9h 92, 93, 94- 

Shenstone, William, 182. 

Shirley, Lady Fanny, 192. 

Shirley, the Hon. Sewallis, 126, 
127, 240. 

Shorter, Catherine (Lady Wal- 
pole), 13, 14, 248 ; death of, 
35 ; burial of, 36; Dryden 
claimed as great uncle to, 
249. 

Shorter, Sir John, Lord Mayor 
of London, 13. 

Short Notes, Walpole's, 
quoted, 15, 21, 27, 50, 71, 
100, 153, 173, 184,224,280. 



Skerret, Maria, 15, 64, 81, 248. 

Smollett, Tobias, 126, 130. 

Spence, Professor Joseph, 65, 
70, 71, 182. 

Sterne, Laurence, 210. 

Strawberry Hill (Twicken- 
ham), Walpole removes to, 
no; description of, 135- 
152, 178, 179, 246 ; previous 
tenants of, 138, 139; ad- 
ditions to, 139, 242, 243 ; 
the Gothic castle at, 141- 
148 ; views executed by 
Miintz, 167 ; private print- 
ing press at, 174, 177, 178, 
180 ; described by William 
Robinson, 178, 179, 180; 
works published at the Ofh- 
cina Arbuteana, 180, 181, 
182, 183 (see appendix), 
188, 189; Description of the 
Villa at, 231, 239, 245 ; fetes 
at, 243, 244 ; ground plan 
of the villa at, 247 ; China 
Closet and China Room at, 
249 ; the Yellow Bedcham- 
ber (Beauty Room), 249 ; 
Breakfast Room, 250, 252 ; 
plan of principal floor, 25 1 ; 
Green Closet, 252 ; Libra- 
ry? 2 53 5 Blue Bedcham- 
ber, 252 ; Armoury, 253 ; 
the Red Bedchamber, 254 ; 
the Holbein Chamber, 254 ; 
the Star Chamber, 255 ; the 
Gallery, 243, 256 ; the 
Round Tower, 257 ; the 
Cabinet (Tribune), 258 ; 
collection of rarities, 258, 



Index. 



367 



259, 260 ; the Great North 
Bedchamber, 245, 259; the 
Great Cloister, 261 ; the 
Chapel, 261 ; the Flower 
Garden, 140, 261 ; Gothi- 
cism of the villa, 262, 263 ; 
bequeathed to Mrs. Damer, 
308; subsequent disposal of, 

3°9- 

Stuart, Prince Charles Edward 
(the Chevalier), his descent 
on Scotland, 112, 120; 
temporary success of, 113, 
114 ; escape of, 115. 

Stuart, Lady Louisa, her 
Introductory Anecdotes 
quoted, 14, 15, 16, 22, 

23- 
Suffolk, the Countess of (Mrs. 

Howard), 19, 151, 168, 190, 

240. 
Swift, Jonathan, 30, 127, 168. 

Tovvnshend, Charles, Viscount, 

16, 189. 
Townshend, Lady. (See Harri- 
. son, Audrey.) 
Tragedy in England, Walpole's 

opinion of, 229, 230. 
Triumvirate, the, 24. 
Twickenham. (See Strawberry 
fc Hill.) 

Vane, Henry, Earl of Darling- 
ton, 157. 

Vauxhall, 109, 156, 157, 158, 
159, 160. 

Versailles, visited by Walpole, 
47, 207, 208, 209. 



Verses on the Suppression of the 

Late Rebellion, 122, 123, 

124. 
Vertue, George, the engraver, 

87, 88, 96, 186, 254. 
Voltaire, Francois Marie Arou- 

et de, 214, 226. 

Wales, Frederick, Prince of, 
35> 79> io 9> IIJ '■> composes 
a chanson on the battle of 
Fontenoy, in; wins ^800 
from Lord Granby, 160. 

Walpol, Sir Henry de, n. 

Walpole, Dorothy, Lady Town- 
shend, 16, 248. 

, Sir Edward, Knight 

of the Bath, 12. 

, Sir Edward (brother 



of Horace), 124, 125, 241 ; 

the daughters of, 241 ; 

death of, 296. 
, George (third Earl of 

Orford), 173, 240, 285, 286. 
, Horace (Horatio), his 



ancestry, 1 1, 12, 13 ; scandal 
regarding his birth, 13 ; 
early childhood, 15, 16, 17, 
18, 19, 20; his visit to 
George I., 18; his appear- 
ance as a boy, 21 ; his 
schooldays at Eton, 21, 
22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27; his 
scholarship, 22, 30, 31 ; his 
companions at Eton, 23, 24, 
26,27; enters Lincoln's Inn, 
27 ; enters King's College, 
Cambridge, 29 ; his uni- 
versity studies, 29, 30, 31 ; 



368 



Index. 



the " triumvirate," 24 ; the 
" quadruple alliance," 24, 
29 ; literary productions at 
Cambridge, 35 ; appointed 
Inspector of Imports and 
Exports, 41; becomes Usher 
of the Exchequer, Con- 
troller of the Pipe, and 
Clerk of the Estreats, 42 ; 
leaves college, 42 ; travels 
with Gray, 43 ; visits 
France, 44-54 ; in Switzer- 
land, 54 ; crosses the Alps, 
55 ; in Italy, 56-71 ; his 
description of Lady Mary 
Wortley Montagu, 64 ; 
his misunderstanding with 
Gray, 67, 68, 69, 70 ; his 
illness in Florence, 70 ; his 
return to England, 71 ; be- 
comes member of Parlia- 
ment for Callington, 71 ; 
poetical Epistle to Thomas 
Ashton, yy, 78 ; praised by 
Gray, yy ; his letters to 
Mann, 79, 84, 105 ; his 
first speech in Parliament, 
82 ; his Sermon on Paint- 
ing, 90, 91, 92, 93; the 
jEdes Walpoliance, 94, 95, 
96 ; his parodies, 96, 277 ; 
his paper against Lord 
Bath, 96 ; his father's 
death, 97, 98, 99 ; receives 
legacy from his father, 100 ; 
his criticism of Mrs. Woff- 
ington and of Garrick, 106; 
removes to Twickenham, 
1 10 ; his Verses on the 



Suppression of the Late 
Rebellion, 12.2, 123, 124; 
epilogue to Tamerlane, 
122; marriage of his sisters, 
124 ; his criticism of Lady 
Orford, 125, 126; his con- 
tributions to The Museum, 
128 ; his poem, The Beau- 
ties, 128, 129; resides at 
Windsor, 130; his descrip- 
tion of Strawberry Hill, 135, 

136, 137, 139, HO, 141, 
142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 

147, 148, 149, 15°, 151. 
179, 231, 244, 245, 263 
(see Strawberry Hill) ; his 
papers in The Remem- 
brancer, 153 ; his tract De- 
lenda est Oxonia, 153 ; is 
robbed in Hyde Park, 153, 
154, 155 ; his account of 
Vauxhall, 156, 157, 158, 
159, 160; his papers in 
The World, 162 ; his rec- 
onciliation with Gray, 163 ; 
his admiration of Gray's 
poetry, 164, 165, 166; is 
chosen member of Parlia- 
ment for Castle Rising, 
173; for Lynn, 174; his 
Castle of Otranto, 174, 194, 
195, 196, 197, 198, 205; 
publishes Gray's Odes, 174, 
181 ; his Catalogue of Royal 
and Noble Authors, 174, 
182, 183 ; his first Mem- 
oirs, 175; his Letter from Xo 
Ho, 175, 176, 177, 335 ; his 
other Catalogues, 177, 182, 



Index. 



369 



188; establishes the Offi- 
cina Arbuteana, 177; his 
publications, 182, 183, 184 
(see appendix), 186, 187, 
188, 198 ; his Catalogue of 
Etigravers, 188 ; his Anec- 
dotes of Painting, 185, 188, 
282, 284 ; his occasional 
pieces (The Magpie and 
her Brood, Dialogue between 
two Great Ladies, The Gar- 
land, The Parish Register), 
190, 191, 285 ; his second 
visit to Paris, 205, 206, 207, 
209, 210, 211, 212,213, 2I 4> 
215,216; is presented to the 
royal family, 207, 208, 209 ; 
sham letter to Rousseau, 
218 ; visits Bath, 221 ; his 
third visit to Paris, 222 ; his 
Account of the Giants, 224 ; 
begins his Memoirs of the 
Reign of George III., 224 ; 
retires from Parliament, 
225 ; his letters to the Pub- 
lic Advertiser, 225 ; his 
Historic Doubts on Rich- 
ard III., 225, 226, 227 ; his 
tragedy, The Mysterious 
Mother, 225, 227, 228, 
229 ; his relations with 
Chatterton, 231, 232, 233, 
234, 235 ; his fondness for 
his nieces, 241 ; his corre- 
spondence, 276; his minor 
writings, 277, 278, 280 ; 
his Nature will Prevail, 
280; his fourth visit to Paris, 
289 ; his correspondence in 



French, 289 ; his farewell 
to Mme. du Deffand, 291 ; 
his acquaintance with Han- 
nah More, 297 ; his friend- 
ship with the Misses Berry, 
298, 299, 300, 301, 302, 304, 
305, 325 ; his Reminiscences, 
301; his Catalogue of Straw- 
berry Hill, 301 ; succeeds his 
nephew as Earl of Orford, 
302 ; his Epitaphium Vivi 
Auctoris, 304; his last let- 
ter to Lady Ossory, 306 ; 
his death and burial, 306 ; 
disposal of his estate, 308, 
309 ; Lord Macaulay's crit- 
icism of, 315, 316, 317, 
318 ; portraits and descrip- 
tions of, 318, 319, 320, 321, 
322 ; Pinkerton's reminis- 
cences of, 322, 323, 324; 
his character as a man, 
325, 326, 327, 328; as a 
virtuoso, 328, 329, 330 ; as 
a politician, 330, 331, 332, 
333 ; as an author, 334, 335, 

336, 337- 

of Walterton, Horatio, 

Baron, 16, 257. 

-, Maria (Lady Walde- 



grave), 241, 243. 

-, Lady Mary (Countess 



of Cholmondeley), 85, 124. 

, Reginald de, n. 

-, Sir Robert (first Earl 



of Orford), ancestry of, 11, 
12; first marriage of, 13; 
second marriage of, 64 ; 
decline of his political 



25 



37° 



Index. 



power, 79, 80 ; resigns the 
premiership, 81 ; is created 
Earl of Orford, 81 ; in- 
trigues against Pulteney, 
82 ; prevents his own dis- 
grace, 83 ; death of, 97, 
98, 99 ; will of, 100. 

, Robert (second Earl 

of Orford), 109, 127, 158. 

, Lady Robert (Countess 



of Orford), 63, 125, 126, 
127, 240; death of, 295. 

, Col. Robert, M. P., 12. 

, William, 13. 



Walpoles of Houghton, pedi- 
gree of the, 11 ; spelled 
Walpol, 11. 

Walpoliana, Pinkerton's, 13, 
20, 107, 296, 298, 321,322, 

323, 324. 
Walsingham, Melusina de 
Schulemberg, Countess of, 
19. 



Wesley, John, Walpole's de- 
scription of, 221. 

West, Richard, 26, 27, 127. 

Whitehead, Paul, 168. 

Wilkes, John, 210. 

Williams, George James, 166, 
205, 241. 

Williams, Sir Charles Han- 
bury, 23, 160. 

William Henry, Duke of Glou- 
cester, marries Maria Wal- 
pole, 241. 

Woffington, Margaret, 106. 

Xo Ho, Letter of, 175, 176, 
177. 

Yarmouth, the Countess of 
(Mme. de Walmoden), 19. 

Zouch, Rev. Henry, 232; Wal- 
pole's letters to, quoted, 
185, 186, 187, 325. 



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